humanities.lit.authors.shakespeare

More about Baker - (once writing as Alcibiades?)


(quote, excerpts)

Roger phones his friend John Baker and informs him of our interest in
the 1919 events, and we are invited over. Baker is the owner of
Sticklin Greenwood Memorial Park, where Everest is buried.

Driving through the town, past taverns with "No Firearms Allowed"
signs, down a street lined with fast food restaurants and a lone cafe
advertising espresso, we turn north, and, by the freeway, see John.
Tall and thin, with sharp movements, bespectacled with closely cropped
hair, he is raking leaves. As we get out of the car he greets us with
a handshake.

Twenty years ago he taught philosophy in Florida, but his wife
inherited land in Washington. When he arrived, he discovered their 30
acres included the cemetery. The marriage ended, but John remained.

The walls of his house are covered with dozens of paintings given to
him by mourners. John tells us he has become so immersed in the life
of Wesley Everest and the events surrounding his death that he even
changed the last four digits of his phone number to 1919.

I am always amazed by people who retain every bit of information
about the Kennedy assassination or UFO sightings, and Baker possesses
a similar memory. Gesturing with his hands, he speaks passionately
about bullet projectiles, the position of the IWW workers when their
hall was raided, the various books that were written and the various
shortcomings of their accounts, as well as of his current research
into the true identity of William Shakespeare.



http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/crawdad/213/centralia.html

(quote, excerpts)

Local support John Baker, sexton at Greenwood Memorial Park in
Centralia, guided Richards-Coppola on her tour of Everest's run. The
two worked their way from the corner of Second Street and Tower Avenue
up to the banks of the Skookumchuck, and then to the Mellen Street
bridge over the Chehalis River, from which the original abutments of
Hangman's Bridge can still be seen just to the north.

"I've taken people on this tour hundreds of times," said Baker, a
Centralia resident for the past 27 years. "They come from all over and
ask what happened here." Greenwood Memorial Park is the home of
Everest's grave, which was placed on the National Register of Historic
Places in 1993.

Baker wishes that the community would embrace the notorious bit of
history, rather than turn a blind eye to the situation. "No one in
Centralia is being blamed for these events," said Baker. "When we deny
or are secretive about them, it's foolish. "It's as if a meteor had
hit here in 1919 and people come looking for the crater, and they're
saying, 'What crater?' " Baker was excited, however, at the prospect
of Richards-Coppola bringing more attention to Centralia, and to the
memory of Everest and fallen Legionnaires. "She's got that story, and
she's going to do something about it," he said.

http://www.ghostofhangmansbridge.com/centraliachronicle.htm