Nov 8, 2007
Window into History
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Remembering the fiesty,
yet proper, Katherine Nicolai
Baker
Early this summer, Lewisboro lost one of its most treasured citizens, Katherine Nicolai Baker. Ms. Baker died on June 27 at the age of 85. She lived in her beloved
hamlet of Lewisboro for most of those 85 years and was its staunchest supporter. Just ask any highway superintendent or town official who received her letters and telephone calls asking that the name Lewisboro Hamlet be added to the official town map and that signs saying “Welcome to Lewisboro Hamlet” be erected along Smith Ridge Road signifying the hamlet’s boundaries.
Born in Manhattan on March 14, 1922, Ms. Baker spent most of her long life in Lewisboro, as a youngster in Vista and then on Elmwood Road. She was a 1941 graduate of New Canaan High School. Whenever I needed historical information about those hamlets, Ms. Baker was one of the first people I called. She was generous with her memories and her time, always. She loved to meet the children I would bring to the old Vista one-room schoolhouse on East Street and got a real kick out of telling stories about when she went to that school in the 1930s. She supplied several family photos for my Images of Lewisboro book, too.
Ms. Baker loved the outdoors and nature. She may have learned some of her wonderful gardening skills from her mother. As a child she rode her horse everywhere, even into New Canaan. Of course, there were fewer cars on the road, and many of the roads were not even paved. Jack Nicolai, her father, operated a gas station and garage business on Smith Ridge Road, next to where Ring’s End Lumber is now. The Nicolai family lived in the white house, which still stands between the lumber yard and the shopping center. Her mother and a friend, assisted by a young Katherine, operated a small food stand next to the garage during the summer “tourist season” selling homemade jams, jellies and sundries.
Ms. Baker was a woman with many interests and a grand sense of adventure. Slight of build and always with a thin, but wiry figure, she wangled her way into the U. S. Coast Guard during World War II by putting fish weights into her hair to pass the weight requirement. After the war, Miss Nicolai lived in Brooklyn Heights and worked as a bookkeeper, often coming back to Lewisboro Hamlet on weekends to visit her parents. On one of these occasions, knowing his daughter would need transportation from the train station to her home, Jack Nicolai asked an acquaintance, Ross Baker, if he would mind meeting her at the train and bringing her home. Mr. Baker, who had worked for the publishing firm Bobbs Merrill and had his own home in Lewisboro, didn’t mind at all, and, in fact, it was love at first sight for the eligible bachelor.
Although there was a noticeable age difference between the two, her dad had proved a successful matchmaker. They dated for some time, but then he went off to stay in Europe for a while. It wasn’t long before she received an overseas phone call from a lovesick Mr. Baker saying, “I can’t live without you!” Miss Nicolai took the next plane to meet him and they were married on Gibraltar. That was 1963 and it was the start of a three-year European honeymoon. The marriage lasted a vibrant 20 years until Mr. Baker’s death in 1983.
Little dynamo
Ms. Baker was a dynamic, feisty, yet most proper lady. She had boundless energy that some of her neighbors found hard to keep up with. She was meticulous in her work habits and thorough in all projects that she undertook. She was a founding member of the Lewisboro Garden Club, along with Alice Poor and several other Lewisboro gardeners; a longtime member of the South Salem Library’s evening book group; a staunch and liberal Democrat; and an ardent pet lover. She and Mr. Baker even had a pet wild squirrel that they trained after rescuing it as a tiny orphan. The animal lived in a birdcage when not out and about exploring the Baker residence.
Ms. Baker was most proud of her volunteer work, especially with the AmeriCares organization based in New Canaan, Conn., but known throughout the world as a force that will be there in times of need brought on by disaster, war or famine. After Mr. Baker died, Ms. Baker offered her services to AmeriCares, which was just getting started. She was one of its first volunteers, working as a bookkeeper in the home office, at first doing all the data entry by hand, later on her computer. In the organization’s Eighth Annual Fund-raising Dinner Dance program (1995), Ms. Baker is quoted as saying, “Literally, I have no family now, so it’s delightful to come to AmeriCares. It’s family for me.”
“Katherine Nicolai Baker was a woman of boundless energy, and she expected the same from others,” her friends Myra and Sam Shamstein told me in a recent conversation after a memorial service for Ms. Baker last month. She was a shy lady who preferred to remain out of the spotlight, unless it was for a cause she considered worth fighting for. Her gardens and her cats and dogs were her passions.
Lewisboro was her beloved home, and she tried her best to make it just a little better. As we travel through the town, especially next spring as the roadside daffodils begin to blossom and the intersections’ triangles wake up and take on color, take a moment to remember Ms. Baker, and then think of something you can do to keep Lewisboro a wonderful place to live.
© Copyright 2008 by Hersam Acorn Newspapers
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