Dorothy Louise Baker (Erickson)
Born December 26th, 1937, Died December 31st, 2023
Mom and Dad planted seeds in their gardens to watch the flowers and veggies grow. Together, they also planted seeds of goodwill in all their eleven children, which over time bloomed and spread to their thirty grandchildren and twenty great grandchildren. It is a large, happy, and still growing family.
Dorothy was immensely proud of her children, certainly less about any prestige or accomplishments, but more about their impact on the world as good people. This was a running theme throughout her life, whether raising children, gardening, weaving, adopting a daughter or volunteering. She and Dad wanted to make the world a better place. She seemed to feel that making the world a better place was the best legacy you could have, and it’s one that she unquestionably achieved.
Her immediate family includes: Ronald Baker (deceased), Ronald Erickson (brother, wife Nancy), Mary Calderon (sister, husband Richard), and her children Jerry Baker (wife Mary), Margaret (Peg) Dircksen (deceased) (husband Andy), Steve Baker (wife Janet), Mike Baker (wife Tamar), Jenny Richardson (deceased) (husband Dale), Chris Baker (wife Heidi), Peter Baker (wife Natalie), Kathy Conners (husband Arlee), Pat Baker (wife Amy), Dan Baker (wife Kristy), Tom Baker (wife Laura).
Dorothy Louise Erickson was born in Dearborn, Michigan to George and Louise Erickson. During WW2 she stayed with her Uncle Oscar and Aunt Jen at their farm in Lapeer, Michigan due to a housing shortage. She additionally lived in Jacksonville, Florida when her parents moved there due to her mother’s health conditions, eventually moving back to Michigan.
Dorothy graduated as Valedictorian of her high school class at Elgin High School in 1955. She came to Purdue University to major in Physics, which was uncommon for a woman in that era. As a freshman, she met the love of her life, Ronald, at a St. Thomas Aquinas mixer. Their first date was at the Triple XXX in West Lafayette. After dating for 2 years, she decided it was more important to focus on their family and dropped out of Purdue (to the dismay of her physics professor), though she always maintained a love of learning and passed it along to her children and grandchildren. They married June 15th, 1957, and honeymooned in Washington DC. Starting their life together in a small apartment on the second floor of a house across from the West Lafayette library, they had their first son Jerry in 1958. Expecting to expand their family, they bought their lifelong house at the north edge of West Lafayette, with an unpaved road leading to Smitty’s Grocery 2 blocks away.
Leveraging their last name, Dorothy and Ron decided that they wanted to have 13 children to make their new family a “Baker’s Dozen”. They were both fond of the “Cheaper by the Dozen” books written by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Carey, and even met Ernestine and invited her over to the house to meet everyone in the 1970s!
With their eventual 11 children plus themselves, they achieved the “Baker’s Dozen”. Dorothy throughout was a dedicated mother, cooked the meals, washed the clothes, organized the thrice-daily house ‘pick-ups’, took everyone to church, and managed, along with Ron, to instill a strong set of values and principles in their children.
As their family grew, they continually expanded and remodeled their Garden St. house until their last child Tom left home. The remodeling provided a wonderful ground-level learning environment for the family in how to do physical work, construction, and cleanup. With her expanding experience with children, Dorothy became a local La Leche League leader. She actively promoted natural breastfeeding, believing that baby formula was lacking important nutrients and immune factors, as well as the importance of the child-mother bond for both the baby and the mother. As their children grew, both she and Ron always managed to support them emotionally and physically in ways that have only become clearer and clearer to their children as time has gone by.
In the early 1970s, they expanded again and purchased a 47 acre ‘farm’ near Battleground, IN which gave everyone more room to run around, play, and to grow and weed large vegetable gardens. They named it “Rabbit Hill” after the book series by Robert Lawson, which was a family favorite. As the grandchildren started arriving, (although they both made it clear that they were not available for babysitting!), she and Ron spent endless hours teaching them various skills – piano, weaving, gardening, baking, electronics and sewing among them.
Dorothy pursued weaving as a hobby for many years, leading and participating in the Wabash Weavers Guild. She developed many friends and displayed and sold her work in local shops and at the Feast of the Hunter’s Moon each October. But one of her favorite ‘sales’ was letting her children and grandchildren select their favorites from her piles of weavings during their birthdays and Christmases.
When the Pioneer Village in the Delphi Canal Park was organized, she displayed and demonstrated weaving techniques there for many years. Both she and Ron contributed hundreds of hours to the reconstruction of a small village and a stretch of the 1830s Wabash and Erie Canal.
Those are the outlines of Dorothy’s life, but as we said about Dad, they miss one vitally important aspect. She and Ron were always looking for a way to be kind and help improve the world. This is something that their children and grandchildren universally agree upon, and over time it has created a circular wave of kindness radiating from Dorothy’s and Ron’s lives.
From her children, thank you for the positive energy and attitude that you have sowed and spread into so many people in this world. May Mom and Dad keep dancing in Heaven!
Please join us for a celebration of life for Dorothy. The gathering is being held on Saturday January 13, 2024, from 10am – 2pm at Delphi Canal Park, 1030 N Washington St, Delphi IN 46923. If you would like to read more, please visit www.eighteen06.org/dorothy.
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