Richard T. Baker d. 1981

BAKER, COLEMAN, THOMPSON, MAST, FISH

Posted By: Sharyl Ferrall
Date: 5/2/2006 at 06:43:13

Richard T. Baker, who retired July 1 as secretary of the Pulitzer Prize Board, died of cancer early Wednesday at his home near Columbia University. He was 68.

An ordained minister, Mr. Baker made a career of journalism education as a professor at Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism for 34 years. He also was the school's associate dean from 1962 to 1968 and acting dean from 1968 to 1970.

He added the duties of secretary of the prize board in 1976.

He also wrote several books, among them "The Christian as Journalist" in 1961.

Mr. Baker was born in Coggon, Iowa, and graduated from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, in 1934. He returned there in 1946 for a doctorate of divinity.

He got a master's degree at the journalism school here in 1937 and spent the rest of the year and the next traveling in Europe and Asia as a Pulitzer fellow.

Mr. Baker joined the Methodist Church's Board of Foreign Missions as assistant publicity director and in 1941 became assistant editor of World Outlook magazine.

From 1943 to 1945 he was on the faculty of the Chinese Graduate School of Journalism in Chongqing and followed this with a stint as correspondent for World Outlook in China, Japan and Korea.

He leaves his wife, Marjorie (Coleman); a son, Coleman E. Baker, of Waterbury Center, Vt.; two grandhildren and three sisters, Ruth Thompson, of North Scituate, Mass.; Beth Mast, of Davenport, Iowa, and Marjorie Fish, of Cedar Falls, Iowa.

-Boston Globe, Sept 4, 1982