Joe Baker

H. Joe Baker (“Joe”) of Cleveland, Oklahoma passed away on Tuesday, April 21 at the age of 88. He is survived by his wife Charlotte, his sister Carol Moore, his daughter Kim and son Jason, son-in-law Marco Sassi and daughter-in-law Tracy Estrin Baker, and two adored granddaughters, Aidan and Isla Baker, as well as five nephews: Jeff, Brent, and Greg Moore, and Chris and Wes Hay.

Joe was born April 4, 1938 to Sie and Mary Baker in Okemah, Oklahoma. The family became complete with the birth of little sister Carol. Sie and Mary raised their family out in the country while Sie worked as a ranch hand and later oilfield worker and Mary took care of the home. The kids went to Weleetka schools; in 1955 Sie and Mary decided to move to Cleveland for work, so Joe went to Cleveland High School for his senior year, graduating in 1956.

He then went to Oklahoma A&M University in Stillwater to study engineering - it transitioned to Oklahoma State University during his college years. He spent summers and holidays helping out in the oilfield. Joe earned his Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1961 and his Masters of Science in 1962.

He then did his U.S. Army service, most of which he fulfilled at a specialized unit at the Natick Laboratories at the Natick Army Base in Massachusetts, that dealt with specialized materials.

After completing his Army service, Joe went to work for Shell Oil in Midland, Texas, as a petroleum engineer. It was there in the summer of 1965 that a brunette student from Eastern New Mexico University came to work temporarily; apparently, Joe was immediately smitten by Miss Charlotte Barbee, and they were married at the First Baptist Church in her hometown of Roswell, New Mexico on June 11, 1966.

Soon Joe decided that the fishing was way better back up in Green Country, so he and Charlotte moved to Tulsa in 1969 for Joe’s new job with Maloney Crawford. They welcomed daughter Kimberly in 1970 and finally moved back to Cleveland, where they would raise their family. Son Jason was born in 1973.

In 1975, Joe had an offer through his employer Crest Engineering of Tulsa to go work on a project for Occidental Petroleum in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. He and Charlotte decided this would be a unique opportunity for their family, so he accepted, and in the summer of 1975, the family of four arrived in Aberdeen - staying first in a hotel in Stonehaven for a number of weeks while their house was being readied; then moving to the house in Peterculter. Most oil families at that time — and there were tons of American oil experts working on North Sea projects in Scotland then — sent their kids to the big international school in Aberdeen, but Joe and Charlotte decided to send Kim to the small local school in Peterculter. Joe normally stayed up working in Orkney for around two weeks and then would come back for a weekend. Attending a local school, Kim developed such a thick Scottish brogue that Charlotte had to interpret between Joe and Kim when he would come home !

The family moved back to Cleveland a little bit after the start of the 1976 school year. Oklahoma was “brand new” to Jason, who had been so little when the family left for Scotland. The kids ultimately graduated from CHS like their dad, aunt, uncle, and three cousins before them. Many weekends were spent taking the family to Lake Keystone and other Oklahoma waterways and fishing for striper, catfish, crappie and more, often with dad Sie.

When the oil market in Oklahoma crashed in 1985-86, Joe was one of the few to be offered to keep his position as Crest shut down its Tulsa operations to centralize everything in Houston. Despite having no clear prospects in Oklahoma, he and Charlotte determined their priority was to continue raising their kids in Cleveland, so they stayed. The first few years after that were a bit lean, but Joe eventually built a thriving enterprise as a safety engineering consultant, much in demand for his precise and thorough work.

During his professional career, Joe worked on many projects in the United States, but also traveled abroad to such places as Iran (before the 1979 Revolution), Libya, and Malaysia. For personal travel he loved going to California to see his granddaughters and to France, exploring different corners of the country. For his and Charlotte’s 50th wedding anniversary in 2016, all the family met in Scotland to revisit old haunts from 1975-76 and to share the beauty and the history of the country with all the family.

He lived a life of service. When Jason wanted to play soccer, Joe — who could not have cared any less about sports — went and got the rule book and registered the Cleveland Pumas with the Keystone Soccer League and brought Cleveland’s first kids’ soccer team to town as a coach. He was a devoted member of Cleveland First Baptist Church and served as a deacon for many years, as Sunday School Director for many more years, and as a Sunday School teacher at the Baptist Village. He served faithfully as a leader and treasurer of the Gideons’ Keystone Camp, going to churches to raise funds for Bibles and New Testaments to be given to students and prisoners.

Joe was reminiscing recently about how lucky he had been in life with the head start he had been given with great parents and great teachers. A message received this morning from a younger engineer he used to work with showed that he took care to pass that on: “As great of a mentor as your dad was, he was an even better person.”

Donations may be made in Joe’s honor to the Keystone Camp of Gideons International, either by picking up a card at the First Baptist Church of Cleveland, sending a check to the Keystone Camp at P.O. Box 1205, Mannford, OK, 74044, or by going to https://Gideons.org/donate and choosing “Donate in Memory.” Alternatively, donations may be made to the Jay C. Byers Memorial Library by sending a check to the library at 215 E. Wichita, Cleveland, OK, 74020.