Loading...Walter Baker, vice chancellor of the Diocese of Kentucky who was a former state senator and state Supreme Court justice, died Monday at his home in Glasgow after fighting cancer for several months. He was 73. The funeral service will be Saturday in Glasgow.
While Baker was well known in the state and beyond for being a statesman and an ardent advocate of education (he was a member of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence), he will be remembered by the members of the Diocese of Kentucky and St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Glasgow as a caring, dedicated and wise servant of the church and community.
Appointed the diocese's vice chancellor in the spring of 2005, Baker provided legal counsel for the diocese at the request of Bishop Ted Gulick and the diocese's chancellor, Robinson Beard. Baker's duties included chairing the diocese's real estate committee, providing the legal documentation for Marmion loans available to congregations and clergy through a diocesan trust fund, and advising the bishop and diocese in property matters. Chancellor Robinson Beard said that although the Harvard-educated vice chancellor was "well over-qualified" for the tasks he undertook on behalf of the diocese, "nevertheless he approached the office with dignity and provided sage counsel, usually sprinkled with appropriate quotes from famous literary or historic figures. His gracious company and good humor will be missed by all who came in contact with him, whether in the church or otherwise."
In addition to serving as vice chancellor, Baker also served on the diocese's Mission Funding Committee and was a member of the Bishop Search Committee that selected the slate of four nominees to be considered at the diocese's special electing convention on June 5.
Baker will be especially missed at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, where the former Presbyterian began attending in 2003 and became an Episcopalian in 2005. St. Andrew's vicar, the Rev. Suzanne Barrow, described Baker as a brilliant and wise man who was not only faithful but also "a very compassionate person in the lives of everyone in this community." She noted, for example, that he went to the home of a man he once defended to personally welcome him back to the community after his release from prison. If any St. Andrew's members were sick, she also noted, he "would go visit them, very quietly."
She especially appreciated the "pastoral care" he showed her as a newly ordained priest, new to Barren County, sent to serve the mission church about the same time the Episcopal Church was making national news for approving New Hampshire's election of Gene Robinson, an openly gay priest, as its bishop. "Walter would leave articles on my desk from the Harvard Divinity News or the New York Times, Wall Street Journal or Washington Post in defense of the Episcopal Church ... so I wouldn't lose heart ... and to keep me going as I was getting threats and hate notes."
Others who knew him gave similar reports of his character and service to others in a Courier-Journal story. Among them, another St. Andrew's member, Phil Patton, Barren County circuit judge, said about Baker: "If he had a choice between practicing law and getting paid for it or doing something for the community and not getting paid, he would always do something for the community. Walter was just a prince."
He is survived by his wife Jane and two children.
The funeral will be at 11 a.m. (CT) Saturday, May 29, at the First Christian Church, 1100 N. Ray St., in Glasgow with visitation from 2 to 8 p.m. (CT) Friday, May 28, at A.F. Crow and Son Funeral Home, 201 East Washington St., Glasgow.
[Photo by Donald Vish]
