TACOMA, Wash. – David Lee Baker passed away peacefully at home in Tacoma, Washington, on April 24, 2022, after a long battle with Lewy Body Dementia. He was with his wife of 51 years, Pamela J. Baker, his daughter Katherine J. Strack and his son-in-law Conrad Strack. He was 74 years old.

David was born on April 20, 1948, in Weymouth, Massachusetts, the first of two children of Lucile and Howard Baker. He was an Eagle Scout. After graduating from Braintree High School, Massachusetts, he went to Bates College where he met his wife-to-be. He spent his junior year studying at the University of Wales at Swansea, then graduated from Bates with a B.S. in Physics in 1970.

Two weeks later he married Pam in Boston, N.Y., near Buffalo. They embarked on a seven-week cross country honeymoon road trip to Seattle and back. Dave joined the Navy for four years and was stationed in Charleston, S.C. He achieved the rank of Lieutenant JG and was the navigator of his ship, the Blakely DE 1072. He was the task force officer of the deck on their deployment off North Vietnam in 1973.

Dave went to dental school at the University of Buffalo, where he received his DDS in 1978 and practiced dentistry in Norway, Maine, for 18 years. Dave then became a professor at University of New England in Portland, Maine, teaching in the Dental Hygiene program. He received a Fulbright Fellowship teaching at Maulana Azad Dental School in Delhi, India. Dave then joined the Willow Run Dental practice in Auburn, Maine. He also did dentistry with international aid programs in Haiti and Ecuador, and in the Dominican Republic with the University of Southern Maine.

Dave was an outdoorsman with a love of hiking and canoeing and traveling throughout the U.S. and abroad. He was also a craftsman, making stained glass windows, Shaker boxes, furniture, cedar strip canoes and stonewalls. He was a great storyteller with a grand sense of humor, a contagious laugh and memorable smile.

A high point of his life was the birth of his daughter in 1978, of whom he was very proud. After Kate and her husband moved to Seattle, Dave and Pam moved to Tacoma, Wash., in 2020.

Dave is survived by his wife Pam, his daughter Kate, his mother Lucile Baker in Braintree, Mass., his brother Andrew Baker and sister-in-law Marie in Brockton, Mass., his brother-in-law Jim Decker and sister-in-law Liz in Gig Harbor, Wash., sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law Carolyn and Milan Schmidt in Grand Marais, Minn., and Nancy and Jim Tomczak in Milton, Vt., by Kate’s husband Conrad, his stepgrandchildren, Theodore and Tristan Strack-Grose and step-great grandson Oliver, and nieces and nephews Sarah and Chris Beatty, Robert and Amanda Baker, James Decker, Geoff Decker, Rebecca Schmidt and Andy Reinsch, Mattine and Nathan Hartzel, Grace Tomczak and Abraham Tomczak, as well as friends collected throughout his lifetime. He is sorely missed.

Memorial donations in Dave’s name may be made to Bates College

(2 Andrews Road,

Lewiston, ME 04240)

or to the

Nature Conservancy

(4245 N. Fairfax Drive,

Suite 100,

Arlington, VA 22203 USA).

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