Clifford M. Baker III ’69

Joe died Sept. 24, 2025, in the log home that he and his wife built in Monterey, Mass., in the Berkshires. He fought a long battle with metastatic colon cancer.

Joe graduated from Deerfield and then followed in the steps of his grandfather, his father, and his brother, John ’67, to Princeton. He majored in biology, played hockey, ate at Ivy, and roomed in 1940 with Boomer, Bob Brown, Crane, Culp, Tommy Douglas, and Dave Johnson. They knew him as “Joe Bear,” and describe him as the glue that bonded them together as lifelong friends.

Following graduation, Joe worked on ranches in Wyoming, where he met his wife, Bonner McAllester. As Joe wrote in our 50th-reunion yearbook, “We committed to a simple, rural life of self-sufficiency and minimized carbon footprint.” In 1974, they moved back to family land in western Massachusetts and put together a life juggling many forms of self-employment. He and Bonner grew most of their own food and cut and split all of their firewood.

Joe was a lifelong ornithologist and nature lover and an accomplished musician. He took graduate courses in Boston University’s artisan program and became a respected maker of stringed instruments. He studied computer science and became an independent programmer and software designer. Joe was a talented painter, mainly in pastels, and was selected to the “Master Circle” in the Pastel Society of America. Shortly before his death, Joe sent a message to his former roommates which ended, appropriately, “Vita brevis, ars longa.”

Joe is survived by his wife; their two daughters, Sudi and Cora; and two grandchildren. We join them in mourning the loss of this gifted, creative, and kind classmate.