Mike Cornell WNKO / WHTH Afternoons
June 15, 2022
Spec Steven D Conover
June 26, 2022
Arlingtoncemetery.net…
…David Baker didn’t like attention, his family said. “He was very shy, very reserved, one of those guys who didn’t like the spotlight on him,” his father said. “We thought he was never going to talk,” his grandmother Marlene Baker said of David as a young child. “His brother did all the talking for him and got everything for him. They were so different. Mark was so outgoing. David was quiet and reserved.”
David Baker was 18 and a recent graduate of Riverside High School when he joined the Marines. The military matured him and forced him to focus, his family said.
“You could just see the transformation of his personality from being a shy boy into a young man because of his tour of duty in the Marines,” his uncle Jim Baker said. During boot camp, David Baker questioned his choice to join the Marines. “He was very homesick and very much missing his family. He very much wanted to come home,” his father said. But David Baker grew to accept his responsibility. When he went on security rounds in Afghanistan, he would volunteer to take the point. As the first vehicle in a convoy, this left him exposed. When his family asked him why he would put himself in danger, he told them, “That’s my job.” He explained to his grandfather — a retired Army colonel, also named Jim Baker — that taking the point allowed him to control the tempo of the security rounds. By going first, he could do a thorough job and prevent someone else from stumbling on a land mine.
David Baker turned 22 on October 1. Before his birthday, he called friends and family, making plans for his expected Christmas visit. “He called his friends, his grandma and grandpa, his cousins,” his father said. “He had access to a satellite phone and he called everybody. Maybe, in hindsight, that was his way of saying goodbye.” …
David Baker was a practical joker. He once convinced his younger sister, Lauren, to eat grass. “He told me rain was salad dressing and the grass was salad,” she remembered. Lauren smiled as she recalled the grass story but teared as she talked about David. “He was my best friend,” she said. “He was the person I could go to for guidance.”
