Left, Vietnam POW Captain David Baker holds his son, David Baker Jr., 3, and chats with his father in 1973. Right, David Baker Jr. today. (Newsday File Photo / Bill Senft)
The photograph hangs in the dining room of the Bethesda, Md., home of David Baker Jr. It shows a little boy looking up with curious wonder at a father he was too young at the time to remember.
The photograph was taken at Kennedy Airport on March 16, 1973, when Baker was 2 and his Air Force pilot father had just been released after nearly a year in a prisoner-of-war camp in Cambodia. The son's memories were so slim that he actually asked the man if he really was his father.
Now, nearly four decades later, the son is preparing to bury his father, retired Brig. Gen. David Baker Sr., at a ceremony scheduled for Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where the nation's military heroes are laid to rest.
But as he does, memories return of a father who survived captivity in the snake-ridden jungles of Southeast Asia, then spent much of the rest of his life nurturing a family and a military career that fate had nearly snatched from him.
Huntington High grad
The senior Baker graduated from Huntington High School in 1964, and from Hofstra University four years later. He retired in 1997 as a deputy director for military education to the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff. He died of heart failure on Jan. 29 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington. He was 62.
"Absolutely, it's comforting to me," Baker said of the photograph, taken by Newsday photographer Bill Senft, who is now retired. "I was able to grow up with a dad; whereas, looking at the photograph, it could have been quite different. He was able to come back to his family.
"There will be a flood of emotions," said Baker, anticipating what his feelings will be at the Arlington ceremony. "Missing him, wishing we had had more time together, thinking that my daughter didn't have the chance to get to know him better."
Baker's daughter, Emily, was born in 2002.
The elder Baker lived a storied military life. On June 17, 1972, he was a 25-year-old Air Force captain serving in Southeast Asia. His wife, Carol, and their toddler son were back home in Huntington. Assigned a target-spotting mission, he boarded a single-prop Cessna and flew low and slow over the jungles of Cambodia.
A surface-to-air missile sliced through the airplane's tail, forcing him to parachute 4,000 feet to the jungle floor, where the Viet Cong waited for him. Shot in his right leg and right hand, he was captured within minutes of reaching the ground.
He spent the next eight months in captivity, alternately dragged on display through remote villages, bound and interrogated by his captors, or held in cramped, half-buried cages that were hidden from view by the jungle's canopy.
He told Newsday in an interview after his release that water would partly fill the cages during monsoon downpours, and poisonous snakes would slither in during the night. To the very end of his life, he avoided movies in which snakes appeared.
But he seized life anew when a 1973 accord with the North Vietnamese government led to the release of some 140 American troops held as prisoners.
He returned home to his family - landing at Kennedy Airport, where Senft took the picture of Baker Sr. walking down a long corridor with his young son. He had received several medals including the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The elder Baker went on to get master of business administration degree at the University of Hawaii in 1974, then resumed an Air Force career that eventually saw him become the only Air Force POW from the Vietnam era to fly missions over Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. He did so while serving as deputy commander of operations for two tactical fighter wings operating out of Saudi Arabia.
In 1994, he was promoted to brigadier general and appointed a vice director of operational plans to the Joint Chiefs. His son said the time in captivity had been so stressful that his father continued to have nightmares until the end of his life.
Although General Baker was often reluctant to share some of his more painful memories, his son said he always found ways to remain open to his family.
He juggled a military career in which he flew jet fighters, then came home to play baseball with his grade-school son. Later, father and son worked together to restore a 1977 Camaro, and frequently traveled to car races. After retiring from the military in 1997, General Baker began a second career with a financial consulting company to help provide for his younger son, Christopher, who is now 30.
Thoughts of family may have helped
"I have to believe that there were times while he was in that cage when he said, 'If I ever get out of here, that is what I want to do,' " said Baker, 38.
Gen. Baker will be buried with family keepsakes - a favorite watch, a heart-shaped necklace that was one of his first gifts to his wife, who lives in Mitchellville, Md., and a crayon drawing by Emily depicting herself and family members holding hands.
Baker said he believes his father maintained an appreciation for the second chance at life that his wartime repatriation offered.
That feeling was driven home a few years ago when the younger Baker hung Senft's photograph on his dining room wall.
"He was silent looking at it," Baker recalled of his father's reaction. "I have to think he was thanking his lucky stars that he was able to come home and be a part of that picture."
The photograph was taken at Kennedy Airport on March 16, 1973, when Baker was 2 and his Air Force pilot father had just been released after nearly a year in a prisoner-of-war camp in Cambodia. The son's memories were so slim that he actually asked the man if he really was his father.
Now, nearly four decades later, the son is preparing to bury his father, retired Brig. Gen. David Baker Sr., at a ceremony scheduled for Wednesday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where the nation's military heroes are laid to rest.
But as he does, memories return of a father who survived captivity in the snake-ridden jungles of Southeast Asia, then spent much of the rest of his life nurturing a family and a military career that fate had nearly snatched from him.
Huntington High grad
The senior Baker graduated from Huntington High School in 1964, and from Hofstra University four years later. He retired in 1997 as a deputy director for military education to the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs of Staff. He died of heart failure on Jan. 29 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, in Washington. He was 62.
"Absolutely, it's comforting to me," Baker said of the photograph, taken by Newsday photographer Bill Senft, who is now retired. "I was able to grow up with a dad; whereas, looking at the photograph, it could have been quite different. He was able to come back to his family.
"There will be a flood of emotions," said Baker, anticipating what his feelings will be at the Arlington ceremony. "Missing him, wishing we had had more time together, thinking that my daughter didn't have the chance to get to know him better."
Baker's daughter, Emily, was born in 2002.
The elder Baker lived a storied military life. On June 17, 1972, he was a 25-year-old Air Force captain serving in Southeast Asia. His wife, Carol, and their toddler son were back home in Huntington. Assigned a target-spotting mission, he boarded a single-prop Cessna and flew low and slow over the jungles of Cambodia.
A surface-to-air missile sliced through the airplane's tail, forcing him to parachute 4,000 feet to the jungle floor, where the Viet Cong waited for him. Shot in his right leg and right hand, he was captured within minutes of reaching the ground.
He spent the next eight months in captivity, alternately dragged on display through remote villages, bound and interrogated by his captors, or held in cramped, half-buried cages that were hidden from view by the jungle's canopy.
He told Newsday in an interview after his release that water would partly fill the cages during monsoon downpours, and poisonous snakes would slither in during the night. To the very end of his life, he avoided movies in which snakes appeared.
But he seized life anew when a 1973 accord with the North Vietnamese government led to the release of some 140 American troops held as prisoners.
He returned home to his family - landing at Kennedy Airport, where Senft took the picture of Baker Sr. walking down a long corridor with his young son. He had received several medals including the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross.
The elder Baker went on to get master of business administration degree at the University of Hawaii in 1974, then resumed an Air Force career that eventually saw him become the only Air Force POW from the Vietnam era to fly missions over Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. He did so while serving as deputy commander of operations for two tactical fighter wings operating out of Saudi Arabia.
In 1994, he was promoted to brigadier general and appointed a vice director of operational plans to the Joint Chiefs. His son said the time in captivity had been so stressful that his father continued to have nightmares until the end of his life.
Although General Baker was often reluctant to share some of his more painful memories, his son said he always found ways to remain open to his family.
He juggled a military career in which he flew jet fighters, then came home to play baseball with his grade-school son. Later, father and son worked together to restore a 1977 Camaro, and frequently traveled to car races. After retiring from the military in 1997, General Baker began a second career with a financial consulting company to help provide for his younger son, Christopher, who is now 30.
Thoughts of family may have helped
"I have to believe that there were times while he was in that cage when he said, 'If I ever get out of here, that is what I want to do,' " said Baker, 38.
Gen. Baker will be buried with family keepsakes - a favorite watch, a heart-shaped necklace that was one of his first gifts to his wife, who lives in Mitchellville, Md., and a crayon drawing by Emily depicting herself and family members holding hands.
Baker said he believes his father maintained an appreciation for the second chance at life that his wartime repatriation offered.
That feeling was driven home a few years ago when the younger Baker hung Senft's photograph on his dining room wall.
"He was silent looking at it," Baker recalled of his father's reaction. "I have to think he was thanking his lucky stars that he was able to come home and be a part of that picture."
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