Sam Baker is a storyteller at heart. And at 102 years old, the former Marine, World War II veteran, scientist, and world’s first GPS salesman has plenty of tales to tell.
The Scottsdale centenarian has come a long way from the cotton farms of Clarksdale, Mississippi, where he was born in 1922. Even when he was a child, stories were an important part of his life.
“I was an avid reader and a very adventurous kid,” he says. “And I wanted to do everything I could read about.”
But it wasn’t until the events of Dec. 7, 1941, that Baker had the opportunity to experience the world beyond the Magnolia State.
“When Pearl Harbor was bombed, we all joined the service,” he recalls.
Baker chose the Marine Corps for the simple reason that one of his engineering classmates was a Marine recruiter. He remembers the date he officially joined up: Sat., April 4, 1942.
His military career took him to Hawaii, Guam, Ulithi Atoll (now part of Micronesia), and Guadalcanal. After the war, he spent 30 years with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps—a scientific agency overseen by the Department of Commerce. Initially responsible for making maps from aerial photography, the job would take him to far-flung destinations such as Alaska, Iceland, and the North Pole. Four years at Brookhaven National Laboratory doing surveying for a fusion project came next, followed by a year selling GPS systems.
Even though his travels sent him around the globe, the most important thing in his life was his family: his wife, Janet, and his two children, Michael and Sally.
“While I was gone, Janet would read to them, but when I came back, they’d say, ‘Daddy, tell us your stories,’” he remembers. “Fast-forward to my son getting married and he and his wife having a little girl. One day, Michael called me and said, ‘Dad, why don’t you write down the story of Herman the worm (for your granddaughter).’”
And that’s how Baker wrote his first children’s book.
The Write Stuff
In 2018, Baker published The Silly Adventures of Petunia and Herman the Worm. The story about a young girl, Petunia, who befriends a talking caterpillar evolved from one of the bedtime story Baker would tell his children. It was inspired by Baker’s own youth.
“I reached back to when I was about 10,” he recalls. “We raised a lot of dill, and there were these enormous caterpillars on (the field). When I thought they were about ready to go into the pupa stage, I’d pick them, put them into a shoe box and keep feeding them until they spun their cocoons. Then two weeks later, they’d come out as black butterflies, swallowtails. I’d take them outside, and they’d fly away.”
While The Silly Adventures is chapter book for students in grades two through five who already are reading, Baker was concerned about those kids who are just beginning their educational journey.
“Reading is the foundation for all learning,” he states. “If you can’t read, you can’t go anywhere. There’s no advancement.”
Growing up, reading was an important part of Baker’s life.
“We weren’t rich enough to have encyclopedias, so the library became our best friend,” he says.
He recalls spending long hours in the school library, choosing books, writing book reports and getting help with his studies from the librarian.
“We read a lot in high school,” he says. “And I don’t recall any of the students having problems reading.”
The Grand Canyon State consistently ranks low for public education, which spurred him to action.
“When I saw how dismal the scores were, I asked myself, ‘What can I do to help?’” Baker remembers. “I thought maybe I could write a story for little children that would encourage them to start learning to read.”
Mining his past once more, he landed on memories of a pet rat he had when he was young. “She was about six inches long, and she was the cleanest thing you ever saw,” he says fondly. “My mother wouldn’t let me take her into the house, so I had to keep her outside.”
The book, Oscar the Mouse, quickly became a top seller on Amazon.
In 2022, Baker released a coloring book featuring the adventures of Oscar and his friends, and last year, he published the second book in the series, Oscar Goes to the Vet.
Baker currently is working on his fourth title, a chapter book in the same vein as Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer inspired by his own childhood exploits.
“At one school, a little boy about age 4 didn’t know how to say ‘thank you,’ so he gave me a big hug,” Baker says. “To have an influence on kids, and to get compliments from the parents, goes deep to my heart.”
“I’ve had a great life,” he adds. “I just want to leave this world a little bit better than I found it, and I hope I have.”
“I was an avid reader and a very adventurous kid.”
“I just want to leave this world a little bit better than I found it.”