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Wendy Baker

1944 - 2021

Wendy Baker obituary, 1944-2021, Eau Claire, WI

BORN

1944

DIED

2021

Wendy Baker Obituary

Wendy Lea Baker - wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, musician, bagel maker, master gardener and Lyme Disease sufferer - formerly of Eau Claire, passed away March 20, 2021 at Sylvan Crossings in Waunakee, surrounded by her children and grandchildren.
She was born April 14, 1944 in Sturgeon Bay, the first daughter and second child of the late Harold Arthur Dole and Grace Amelia (Brown) Dole.
Wendy played piano, trumpet, and French horn, and in 1960 met the love of her life, John Henry Baker, in the Eau Claire City Band. They were married November 9, 1963.
She started working in second grade in the Door County cherry orchards. After moving to Eau Claire in junior high, she babysat, worked at the Metropolitan dime store, went back to Door County in the summers to work in the orchards during the days and at the canning factories at night, and later worked as a teller at American National Bank and as a cashier at the former Eau Claire Farmers Co-Op. She graduated from UW-Eau Claire with degrees in Business Education and English.
After her eldest child suffered a serious injury as a toddler in the early 1970's while in the care of a babysitter, Wendy immediately quit her job, and gave up her career to stay home and raise her children.
Neighborhood kids were always welcome in the Baker home. Wendy was a good sport about the snails, clams, mud puppies, crayfish, minnows, turtles, frogs, and other wild creatures her kids would find in the Chippewa River and bring home, though was also cognizant enough of these creatures' own interests to insist that they timely be placed back in the river. She took her kids canoeing up and down the river, swimming off sandbars that she had somehow become aware of, and occasionally exploring islands. Berry picking in abandoned reservoirs in the Eau Claire municipal wells area, and riding bikes around the countryside in Hallie, were also family favorites. In the colder months she'd never say "no" to making a couple batches of popcorn and playing some serious Cribbage or Hearts.
Wendy also had a knack for getting her offspring to read. What young adolescent before the internet wouldn't sneak around reading Tom Jones after specifically being directed not to because they were purportedly too young and the book was purportedly too scandalous?
And on long car trips on family vacations while John was driving out to Yosemite or the Grand Canyon or elsewhere, Wendy would read aloud-- not only Greek myths, but also such classics as The Cask of Amontillado and Oliver Twist, pausing to explain somewhat archaic language, to ensure that her children understood each word.
When her middle child (Kathy) decided at age 11 to become a vegetarian, Wendy supported her, and ensured that she would have a complete protein with all complementary and necessary amino acids, plus B-vitamin supplementation. Thirty-seven years later, Kathy still eschews eating her fellow earth-dwellers.
And Wendy also helped her daughter Kathy take on the law-breaking DeLong junior high administration, back in the day. Specifically, 30-odd years ago, Kathy had asked at school why girls were required to wear specific expensive gym uniforms, while boys were permitted to wear any old worn out blue shorts and any old white shirt (including those with tobacco logos) they felt like for gym. The gym teacher responded that this was because if a girl were to do a cart-wheel or stand on her head, her shirt could drop down, exposing her chest. Kathy decided to see if the teacher was lying or telling the truth. Wendy (being the good sport she was) took Kathy to the fabric store to buy snaps, and helped her affix the snaps to a pair of blue shorts and the white "Simple Minds" t-shirt that Kathy had selected, to be a finger in the eye of the totalitarians in charge of the school, in the event that she were to be punished. Not surprisingly, Kathy was suspended for daring to refuse to change out of that gym gear (with snaps attached, even) and refusing to change into the girls' uniform; the fascists in the administration placed her in an in-school suspension until such time as she would knuckle under and wear the uniform that boys weren't required to. Not surprisingly, Wendy and John supported their daughter by getting an attorney involved; Kathy was allowed back in school, allowed to wear the "Simple Minds" shirt that reflected the school administration's mind-set, and shorts. Her record was wiped clean.
After her children all were of school age Wendy returned to work part-time-- teaching at what was then District One Technical Institute, and occasionally summer school for the ECASD.
In the very late 1980's, Wendy (who routinely spent days out in the woods walking or berry picking with her kids, at times coming home with a few embedded ticks) came down with a mystery illness. Instead of thinking scientifically, an arrogant and misogynistic medical community that has denied the reality of women's actual ailments from Hippocrates to Freud to the present, decided that her ongoing chronic pain and brain fog must be all in her head.
All too frequently Wendy was treated with derision and contempt by a few (though certainly not all) physicians who were too narcissistic to realize the limitations of their training.
Her family recalls her frustration at returning home from an appointment with a contemptuous neurologist who, Wendy related, had a "smirky sneer" on his face as he shook his head and refused to order a Lyme test in the 1990's when she suspected that Lyme might be what was wrong with her (though he had snidely offered to refer her to a psychologist; in retrospect perhaps he was the one who needed psychological help to address his excessive level of grandiose narcissism that caused him to erroneously conclude that if he couldn't identify an illness then it possibly couldn't exist).
In the early 1990's, Wendy owned and operated Wendy's Naturals, selling environmentally-friendly products such as unbleached hemp paper, hemp clothing, and personal care products that did not contain endocrine-disrupting preservatives or additives.
After her husband John retired in 1996, John and Wendy got a good deal on a second-hand motor home. Notwithstanding Wendy's illness, they traveled the west with their two cats, Pixie and Whiskers. In 1999, they moved to the Town of Drammen, where, despite her chronic pain and neurological problems, Wendy did her best to enjoy life and planted multiple gardens to benefit native pollinators.
Almost two decades after Wendy developed her mystery illness that wouldn't go away, her grandson came down with identical symptoms. Perhaps due to the fact that he was male, the realities of his experiences were not denied, and he was not treated as though he was crazy. Rather, he was given a Lyme test upon request, which was positive. At that point Wendy's husband John put his foot down and demanded that she, too, be given a Lyme test, which was positive. Following a spinal tap, Wendy was diagnosed as having a "well-entrenched" Lyme infection.
Although oral and IV antibiotics cleared the actual infection within a few months, her body and brain were ruined from two decades of Borrelia burgdorferi spirochetes nibbling away at her neurons. She suffered permanent cardiac complications, permanent disabling neurological effects, and chronic life-long pain that could have been completely avoided at the outset with a month's worth of antibiotics had a medical professional been inquisitive rather than dismissive, narcissistic, and misogynistic when she was in her early 40's and starting to suffer from a Lyme infection.
As the old joke goes:
Q: What do you call the guy who graduates at the bottom of his medical school class?
A: Doctor.
Despite her horrible Lyme complications and the pain she suffered for over 30 years, Wendy babysat for her eldest grandson while her eldest daughter finished her undergraduate degree, and for her eldest granddaughter, while her son worked long hours.
Wendy and John resided in the Town of Drammen until 2017, when John's failing health forced them to move back into town. In 2019 they sold their home in Eau Claire and moved in with their daughter and family in Madison. Wendy lived in Madison until January 2021, when she moved into Sylvan Crossings, Waunakee.
Wendy is survived by her daughter Andrea and her husband Eric of Madison, daughter Kathleen and her husband Jim of Des Moines, son John of Eau Claire, and grandchildren Hailee of Eau Claire, Kai, Aiden and Sophie of Des Moines, Andrico, Hypatia and Elsie of Madison, and Nicole of Cristalina, Brazil.
Wendy is further survived by her sister Kathleen (and husband Tom) Anderson of Green Bay, and in-laws Sonjia (Edison) Dole of Eau Claire, Mary Ellen (Glenn) Moser of Wilmington, DE, Sally (Schultz) Baker of Hallie, Joann (Terry) Halvorson of Fall Creek, Sue Moseley of Kennesaw GA, Jane Gore of Seattle WA, Cindy (Dan) LaVelle of Eau Claire, and numerous nieces, nephews, and grandnieces and grandnephews.
She was preceded in death by her husband John, her brothers James "Jim" Dole and Robert "Bob" Dole, and brothers-in-law Robert "Bob" Baker, Robert "Bob" Ures, Dr. Charles Roy Gore, and Carl Moseley.
Due to the pandemic and the family's respect for science over politics, there will be no funeral, although her immediate family will hold a private Celebration of Life. Memorials may be made in Wendy's name to the EdVest account of a child of your choice, to Feed My People Food Bank, or to the charity of your choice.

To plant trees in memory, please visit the Sympathy Store.

Published by Leader Telegram from Mar. 23 to Mar. 25, 2021.

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Everett and Tina Miles

March 24, 2021

Our sincerest sympathy to the family.
Wendy was Everett´s sister Nancy´s very good friend. Everett remembers picking Wendy up with Nancy to take them to school. Very fond memories. She was a wonderful person.
`

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