By Deacon Matthew Hecker, Ph.D.
“Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be. The Father will honor whoever serves me.”
John 12:24
Father Nicholas Baker has been a priest of God for 60 years. For six decades, Father Baker has lovingly served the Lord, faithfully following a call to priesthood that came to him at a young age.
Father Baker was born and raised in Falls City.
“It was a railroad town,” he said. “My dad was an engineer for 37 years for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. I was the last in a family of five girls and two boys.”
With a twinkle in his eye, Father Baker recounted the story of his parents’ wedding, Oct. 5, 1920. While the pair were dating, Father Baker’s dad was caught speeding going down the railroad tracks.
“They fined him and said he couldn’t work for 30 days,” Father Baker said. “So, during that 30-day period, he and my mom got married. They got a free pass on the railroad to the Golden Gate Bridge (San Francisco)…. They came back free, on the railroad. That’s what they did during that 30-day period.”
In those days, the locomotives were steam engines, powered by coal.
“As a result of inhaling coal dust and ash, my dad got sick and died of leukemia,” Father Baker explained. “That happened when I was 11 years old.”
Father Baker is a proud graduate of Sacred Heart School in Falls City. He attended grades 1-12 at Sacred Heart. During that time, all his teachers were Sisters of Charity from Leavenworth, Kan.
“There were 11 sisters. They got paid $30 a month and the pastor complained about it,” Father said with a laugh. The only person who wasn’t a nun, “was the coach, Jug (John) Brown. The stadium in Falls City is named for him. He coached for Falls City High School. But the public schools made a ruling that you had to be on the faculty to coach. So he worked for the lumberyard and at 4:00, he’d come up and coach us guys at Sacred Heart in football and basketball and track.”
Msgr. Lawrence Obrist was pastor at the time and Bishop Louis Kucera was bishop. Father Baker graduated from high school in 1955 and, went for two years to St. Benedict’s College in Atchison, Kan., then to St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee.
“In 1957, Bishop Kucera died while I was down at St. Benedict’s,” Father Baker recalled. “I said to Msgr. Obrist, ‘What am I going to do now? I don’t have a bishop! Where am I going to go to school?’ He said, ‘don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it.’ He went to St. Francis Seminary, so he said he’d pull some strings. So, I went there, too.
“Where I should have gone is Conception Seminary, just 60 miles away from Falls City. But I was young and dumb and didn’t know anything.”
He was ordained by Bishop James Casey May 25, 1963, in Falls City, “right in my home parish,” Father Baker said.
“That was the way they used to do it. There were four in my class. Father (Edwin) Stander and I, and two others who later left the priesthood.”
Father Baker served in active ministry for 50 years before retiring in 2013.
He recalled, “My first assignment was with Father Frank Murphy in Marietta. I taught Latin at Aquinas High School. My first pastorate was in Dawson and I returned to Falls City Sacred Heart as a teacher. I was there for nine years. I talked my mother into becoming my housekeeper. She was my housekeeper in Dawson until she died in 1977.”
The school holds a very special place in Father Baker’s heart.
“I got my vocation from Sacred Heart,” he said. “We had the sisters and they were all very humble. We’d be mean to them one day and the next day they’d come back smiling. I said to myself, ‘Well, whatever that is, I have to have it.’ So I went to the seminary.”
Over the years, Father Baker served in many locations throughout the diocese. Coincidentally, he noted, “I taught in our schools for a total of 17 years. I was chaplain to Magnificat for 17 years. And I served on the marriage tribunal for 17 years.”
Among the highlights of his priesthood, Father Baker said, “I loved being a parish priest. Praying the Mass, especially on Sundays, hearing confessions, and praying the children’s Masses at school or CCD.”
One of his greatest blessings, he said, “has been the Jesus Caritas group I joined in 1980 and I’m still in it to this day. The monthly holy hour, the meal, the study and the review of spiritual life, together with my brother priests, has been a tremendous support and inspiration for me.”
The Jesus Caritas Fraternity is a brotherhood formed by five to seven priests who meet once every month for Scripture sharing, prayer, discussion and friendly conversation and fellowship, usually over a meal.
In response to a question about some of his most difficult challenges, Father Baker replied, “I was really not a very good classroom teacher. I wish I could have been a better teacher for my students. But even to this day, I pray for all of my students. My first students are 70 years old now. If I didn’t get it right in the classroom, these prayers will make it right.”
To serve the people of God with the tender heart of Jesus Christ has been the vocation of Father Baker. He continues to follow Christ’s call to serve, now 10 years into retirement. He celebrates Mass for and with his brother priests at the Bonacum House for retired priests in Lincoln. He hears confessions. He spends time in daily prayer.
He looks back fondly on a life spent following the Lord Jesus Christ and offers this advice: “Pray to the Holy Spirit to lead you on in whatever way God wants you to go.”
