Born in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, Baker attended public schools there and then David Lipscomb College, now
Lipscomb University, in
Nashville from 1936 to 1938. In 1940, he received a
Bachelor of Science degree from
Harding College in
Searcy,
Arkansas. Both Lipscomb and Harding are
Churches of Christ institutions. During
World War II, he served from 1942 to 1946 in the
United States Army Air Forces, now the
United States Air Force. Baker was a successful Chattanooga-area businessman prior to his election in 1966 to the
Tennessee House of Representatives. In 1968, he was elected to the
Tennessee State Senate. In 1970, he received the Republican nomination for the Chattanooga-based
Congressional District to replace
Bill Brock, who was elected to the
United States Senate. He won a very close race in November, undoubtedly aided by coattails of Brock and the Republican
gubernatorial victor,
Winfield Dunn. Baker served two terms in Congress. He was reelected in the Republican landslide year of 1972, in which
President Richard M. Nixon won all but five of Tennessee's ninety-five counties. Baker was a delegate to the
1972 Republican National Convention. In 1974, however, he was defeated for reelection by
Democrat Marilyn Lloyd. Two factors were involved in this defeat. One was the general unpopularity of Republicans in the wake of the
Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation earlier that year, which was played out in many usually competitive and marginally Republican districts throughout the country. The other was that Marilyn Lloyd was the widow of Mort Lloyd, an anchorman at
CBS affiliate
WDEF-TV, who had won the Democratic nomination to face Baker and who had then been killed in a light-
airplane accident on his way to celebrate his primary victory; the Democratic Party then chose his wife to succeed him as the congressional nominee. Baker lost badly in a rematch against Lloyd in 1976, when
Jimmy Carter of
Georgia won Tennessee's
electoral votes. From 1981 to 1985, during the administration of U.S. President
Ronald W. Reagan, Baker served as the regional representative to the
United States Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis. Baker lived his later years in
Nashville and is interred in that city's Woodlawn Cemetery. ==External links==