Nancy & Buddy Baker
Remembering with pictures and words.
This site is a collection of pictures from the lives of my departed parents, Nancy and Buddy Baker, along with some personal notes from me, their eldest son.
This serves as a personal memorial from a son, whose parents never had nor wanted a funeral or proper memorial.
My parents began their lives living only a block apart in Alexandria, Indiana and finished their lives in Colorado. Both were teachers- she of elementary students, he of music students in the brass/jazz department at Indiana University in Bloomington, where they started their married lives.
While in studying at Indiana University, talented trombonist Buddy was invited to play on famous big bands of the day, but he soon decided to instead focus on academic teaching, which kept him closer to family. Nancy chose to step away from her teaching career and devote herself fully to home and family.
In 1965, Nancy’s asthma necessitated an emergency trip to a Denver hospital for an extended recovery, which recentered their lives to Colorado. Buddy found employment at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, where he would end up chairing the brass department at the school of music. He founded the teaching of jazz at both IU and UNC and went on to become a much respected and celebrated authority and teacher of jazz and trombone.
After the turn of the millennium, Nancy learned she had ovarian cancer, which she fought against with grace and spirit for six years before passing in a Greeley hospital in 2007.
Buddy remarried and spent the remainder of his life in Greeley. He passed away in 2023 of a brain aneurism, in a Denver hospital not far from the one Nancy had recovered in from her asthma.
Nancy and Buddy are survived by their three children, Chris, Amy and Dee and Buddy by his two sisters, who still reside in Indiana.
Nancy and Buddy Baker 