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M E M O R I A M
BRYAN MOSES BAKER EULOGIZED as Funny, Passionate, Romantic
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lizabeth Moses (Bryan) Baker P’85 ’87 ’92, beloved wife of former Headmaster Richard H. (Dick) Baker, died on July 23 after a long illness. Bryan was, in all her roles, superlative and remained deeply invested in the lives of her friends and acquaintances. She was a lover of the arts (especially opera), of gardens, of beauty everywhere, of language and humor. Bryan leaves her husband, Dick Baker; children Richard Jr. ’85, Laurie ’87, and Jeffrey ’92; grandchildren Sebastian and Rei Baker, Adelaide and Olive Gifford; and sisters Nancy Dechert and Debbie Moses. At her memorial service in the First Church and Parish in Dedham, daughter Laurie eulogized her mother as “curious and smart…fascinated by human drama, the tragic and the transcendent…she loved to know about people…their inner lives, to get beyond the logic of a person’s motivation to the messy stuff underneath…even fictional characters became people she loved and mourned and identified with.” Laurie’s humorous, heartfelt, insightful, bittersweet eulogy is reprinted in full on the Nobles website, www.nobles.edu/bryanbakereulogy. We are reprinting two of its nine chapters below: Chapter 7 How to fathom the loss of her?
I think about loss. I think about it in the grand scheme of things, and whether the best way in which to endure it is to recognize my inheritance of a particular identity—her identity, and more specifically, her identity as mother. My mother was too reserved to be called gregarious or expansive.
Dick and Bryan Baker PHOTO BY JOE SWAYZE
But she had about her an air of giddy excitement, of child-like delight. Think of the way children are when they have a birthday party or wake up Christmas morning or visit a toy store. That was my mother much of the time, thrilled by the little things. She practically bounced. The memories of my childhood are extremely vivid, perhaps because my mother’s energy was so totally focused on us, and I’m aware that the best memories are those of my mother happy in play. Skipping down Washington St. and singing at the top of our lungs. Collecting chestnuts in late fall on the road to DCD. Reading the Wizard of Oz series, watching Shirley Temple movies, buying stickers at Faneuil Hall. Surely most people have such memories of their mothers, but I feel that my mother liked being with her children more than most. I was a romantic, dreamy child because my mother was a romantic,
dreamy woman. And now, the way I raise my own children is based heavily on a romantic, dreamy nostalgia for the details of my childhood. I want my own girls to love these same things— the books and movies and games— which for the most part, they do. They watch Swiss Family Robinson instead of Hannah Montana, and I fear they will grow up completely uncool. But in the end, they will have identities that reach back through me to their Gwammie, and what better legacy is there? Chapter 8 Who will be my witness?
I talked to my mother almost every day. I told her almost everything and some things in excruciating detail. Obviously she was some kind of saint. On the other hand, she’d tell me the latest episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in excruciating detail, so I suppose we’re even. After her death I found myself
WINTER 2009–2010 l THE NOBLES BULLETIN l 47