San Francisco State University - Franciscan Yearbook (San Francisco, CA)

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? RIENDLY MAN To those who barely know him, Dr. Hugh C. Baker is the man who makes faces and looks like a pussycat, the slight man with the bouncy, energetic walk, the man who puts shy people at ease. Officially, he is Assistant Professor of English and Language Arts, and Advisor to Over- seas Students. He has taught at State since 1936. To those who know him better, he is the friendly man who is inter- ested in everybody and everything and lives in a state of sustained agitation. He grew up in Middletown, Lake County, California. His father was a Protestant minister whose flock often visited the friendly Baker house- hold. lt was natural that young Hugh should like people and want to spend his life helping them. While he was a boy, his ambition -was to be a doctor in China. He wanted to travel. Later, in a freshman botany class at Stanford, he changed his mind. He discovered that he liked to collect plants and study them, but he could not bear to cut them up and look at them under the microscope. As his dislike for botany grew, so did his fascination with English literature, and he soon changed his major. Three summers ago his office happened to be next door to the di- rector of summer sessions at State. Two students from Iraq arrived to enroll at the college. They had so much difficulty in making themselves understood that Dr. Baker was called in to assist. He put them in his evening class in Fnglish. i 31

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t F I I L i L Shortly, two Chinese girls joined his group and also a Spanish stu- dent. The number of foreign students grew. Finally, because I was advising all these people anyway, said Dr. Baker, I became the official advisor to all foreign students. Today we have about l50. The students say of him, He is always patient and kind. He is more interested in our problems sometimes than we are! Dr. Baker delights in arranging special programs for his proteges, in the Activities Room. He schedules meetings with their deans and faculty members. He invites them to his home and prepares their national dishes or lets them concoct their own favorites. His interests are unlimited in variety. Sharing his affections are three temperamental, and highly individualistic Siamese cats. One of these created a family crisis by almost dying of pneumonia. Dr. Baker's hobbies include music, drama, art, walking, and col- lecting bones and plants. His one idiosyncrasy is his adamant refusal to have a telephone in his home. His deep love for m'usic began when his high school owned a clarinet but there was no one to play it. Hugh Baker voIunteered'to try and liked it so well that he played in the school orchestra until he graduated. I was never very good at it, he admits, and I always played second clarinet except at school concerts. The first clarinet player was a Seventh Day Adventist and could never go on a Friday night. It was hard for me to substitute but even harder on the audience. Sometimes Hugh Baker took part in the high school plays. First He would perform with the orchestra. Next he would dash backstage to be ready for his cue. At the intermission he would 'race to his place in the orchestra again. He kept in training for all this by going out for track and baseball. Besides the clarinet, he learned to play the piano and a reed organ that his aunt owned in 1880 and which is now his. His record collection ranges from Gregorian chants to the works of modern composers. Dr. and Mrs.'Baker, who is the former State College librarian-Ruth Richards, often stroll in the arboretum in Golden Gate Park. Dr. Baker has always enjoyed walking as a sport. He remembers a daywhen he and his sister ran a race with the fog rising from the Golden Gate to the top of Grizzly Peak. He remembers another day when they took the dog walking right after they had given him a bath, and the dog thanked them by rolling in a dead snake. He remembers exploring the Berkeley hills on foot.. To those who know him well Dr. Baker is an authority on California 3 2 I