“Since taking early retirement from McGraw-Hill,” wrote Cary Baker in our 50th-reunion yearbook, “I’ve become expert at what our guests say is ‘the best free meal in New York.’” He was describing New York City’s largest private soup kitchen, where, for probably well over two decades before he died March 8, 2012, he helped serve at least a thousand hungry people every day at Holy Apostles Episcopal Church.
Long before that the Army Air Corps put Cary’s sharp mind to work learning Japanese, then decoding that enemy’s radio messages across New Guinea, Australia, the Dutch Indies, and the Philippines. Cary’s business years were devoted to McGraw-Hill, where he edited business and engineering volumes as well as vocational and technical textbooks. Later years saw him as senior editor of the publisher’s community-college division.
Several years before he retired, Cary had moved from his country residence in New Jersey, where he disliked the explosive growth of suburbia, to city life in Brooklyn, where he said he could “catch up on things I never had time to do as a commuter.”
Cary’s only survivor is his nephew, John Martin, of Winter Park, Fla. We include him in our friendly condolences.