Gov. Charlie Baker mourns the death of his mother
After a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease, Elizabeth G. “Betty” Baker, the mother of Gov. Charlie Baker, died Saturday at the age of 83.
In a Facebook post Saturday, the Massachusetts governor remembered his mother’s efforts raising three boys, “along with tons of other kids from around the neighborhood.”
https://www.facebook.com/CharlieBakerMA/photos/a.384099441858.161043.124614346858/10153782664251859/?type=3&theater
In a separate post two weeks ago, Baker had wished his “beautiful, graceful, courageous” mother a happy Mother’s Day.
https://www.facebook.com/CharlieBakerMA/posts/10153753280636859
Born in Rochester, Minnesota, according to a Boston Globe profile in 2015, Betty Baker was “a voracious reader and letter-writer, a Democrat happily married to a Republican, head of Christian education at a Congregational church, mother to dozens of children besides her own official three.”
According to the Globe, Betty Baker also worked for a variety of local organizations, including Metco, the Career and Volunteer Advisory Service, Family Services of Greater Boston, and the Voluntary Action Center.
The governor told the Globe in 2015 that virtually every kid in the neighborhood hung out at his childhood home in Needham, with his mother tending to and cooking for “literally 30 kids.”
Alzheimer’s, however, ran on Betty Baker’s side of the family. And when her mind began to slip due to the progressive neurodegenerative disease, it became time for the Baker family to care for her in turn.
Due to her illness, Betty Baker was not able to attend her son’s inauguration last year as governor, after his second campaign for the office, according to the Globe.
The once-vital, funny woman whose firm, loving hand shaped the younger Charlie Baker into someone who could win the state’s highest office doesn’t know her boy will finally be governor. Suspended in the cruel in-between of Alzheimer’s disease, she no longer knows him at all.
“I am my mother’s son,” Baker said, adding later: “She knew for a long time that this was something that was important to me. It’s hugely disappointing that she doesn’t know I took a second shot at it, and it worked.”
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh offered his “deepest condolences” to the governor and his family Saturday in a Twitter post.
My deepest condolences to Governor Baker on the loss of his mother. My thoughts and prayers are with the Baker family.
— Mayor Marty Walsh (@marty_walsh) May 22, 2016
The Globe reported that Betty Baker died Saturday at a facility in Needham and is survived by her husband, also named Charlie, and three sons. Private services are planned for mid-June.
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