Team Vance loses alumnus, link to past

  • Published
  • By Frank McIntyre
  • Public Affairs
Vance Air Force Base, Okla. --  Vance Air Force Base lost an alumnus Sunday with the passing of 86-year-old Enid native and resident Ralph Baker.
Cadet Baker reported to Enid Army Air School in 1942 as a student in Class 43-B. He was on very familiar territory at the air school that eventually became Vance Air Force Base.
Prior to being drafted into the Army in February 1941, the 1936 Enid High School graduate had farmed the acreage where his pilot training was to take place. While the draftee was receiving infantry training, his parents Ralph and Violette Baker sold their 320-acre farm for $60,000 to the Army. The Army needed to increase its pilot training facilities to meet air power demand to fight the larger German air force.
Cadet Baker was featured in an International News Service article that appeared in newspapers from New York to Seattle in October 1942. The article includes his reaction to training on home ground:
"It was a homecoming in the truest sense of the word. It's all quite confusing," Cadet Baker told his barracks mates when they learned of the odd circumstances surrounding his introduction to basic flying school. "When we rolled up to the gate in the bus, and I heard the drone of engines and planes buzzing around up above it gave me a funny feeling. Back when I was a boy, with a fishing pole in one hand and my 12-gauge shotgun in the other, I used to shoot at crows flying over Dad's wheat and oats. Now the wheat and oats are gone and the crows too, and before long I'll be flying a plane off the runaways where the wheat used to grow and doing lazy eights over the elm trees I used to play under down by the barn.
"I can't undertsand how it happened," he continued. "I didn't ask to be sent here. Out of all the basic flying schools in the country, it just fell my lot to be sent back here."
Cadet Baker would go from flying over his former wheat fields to flying for the Army Air Corps as a first lieutenant in the China-Burma-India Theater, including 70 missions "flying the Hump," the dangerous missions flying over the Himalayas to resupply China. His son, Lindy Baker, said his father relayed a story about being forced to bail out over China and being returned to his camp by Chinese who received a reward for returning downed fliers. During his flying career, Lieutenant Baker earned the Distinguished Flying Cross with one oak leaf cluster, the Air Medal with one oak leaf cluster and other awards and decorations.
Following the war, he was asked by some of his fellow fliers to join in starting up an air transport business, but according to his son Lindy, declined by saying, "I'm flying here because I have to, but I'm not going to fly because I want to."
Returning to Enid, Mr. Baker met and married the former Luella Mae Davis. The couple celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last month.
The Baker and Vance connection still continues. His daughter, Connie Jo Collins is a Computer Services Corporation employee on base. As a member of the individual equipment staff, she outfits all the students now attending pilot training at Vance.