Brother Chris Baker, FSC (’77)
1953 – 2016
Brother Chris Baker was born in in Memphis, where he attended Memphis Catholic High School prior to entering the postulancy of the De La Salle Christian Brothers. As a student at Christian Brothers College, he majored in Religion and Philosophy and minored in Science — but in his future career as an educator, he was principally a Biology teacher.
His teaching career began in 1977 at Roncalli High School in Omaha, Nebraska. He entered the Novitiate, the next phase of formation of the Christian Brothers, in Windsor, Ontario in 1979. Upon completion of his novitiate, he taught at O’Hara High School in Kansas City, Missouri from 1980 to 1983 and then at St. Mary High School in Paducah, Kentucky, before returning to Roncalli High School for the 1984-85 academic year. The following year, he was assigned to Bishop Kelley High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he spent the next ten years.
Brother Chris also earned an MA from the University of Memphis.
Brother Chris moved to Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis in 1966 and remained there until 2004, when he returned to his beloved Kelley High School in Tulsa. He remained teaching there for 11 years until his death in 2016. At the time of his early death from cancer, he had been a De La Salle Christian Brothers for 37 years.
Chris loved to throw a good party. The faculty and staff at Bishop Kelley loved his end-of-the quarter gatherings. He was well-loved and one of the most sought-after Directors for the Buttimer Institute of Lasallian Studies. His commitment to his students was made manifest in the fact that he loved teaching so much, he taught during the last two years of his life while enduring chemotherapy treatments.