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Baker, who celebrates her 100th birthday today, comes from a long line of relatives who achieved or nearly achieved the same feat.
Her Aunt Mary lived to 102, and her Aunt Jennie, for whom Baker was named, also reached the century mark. Cousins lived to 97 and 99.
Born in Marietta, Baker was the fourth of five children of Charles E. and Clara Seaman. They lived at Front and Pine streets.
"We had a little garden and some chickens that my mom would kill and we'd eat," she said.
Baker attended a one-room school for first grade and then went on to the "big school." She graduated in 1927 from the former Marietta High School.
Baker graduated in 1930 from Lancaster General Hospital School of Nursing.
Baker said she enjoyed nursing school, even though it was a lot of hard work.
"We had to make our own supplies every day — cotton sponges, bandages, plaster of Paris bandages," Baker said. "We did everything but the floors."
She said student nurses were not allowed to sit down in front of the doctors.
The nursing students made $8 a month the first two years and $10 a month the last year. They had to buy an $8 dress to wear at the hospital.
They also were not allowed to have long hair, and the housemother would sniff them to see if they had been smoking, she said.
"The doors were locked at 10, but we had a lot of fun," Baker said.
They went ballroom dancing at Maple Grove and had their own dance once a year at the Iris Club.
Although cars weren't her thing and she never drove, Baker can still remember the first airplane ride she took.
The year after Charles Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, Baker's boyfriend took her to Hershey for an open-air airplane ride.
She had to sneak out of her dorm to go, and afterward she was reprimanded and confined to campus for a week, she said.
Baker and her husband had one son, Charles F. Jr., and three grandchildren.
