Tualatin Historical Society President Ross Baker stepped down after serving for 9 years. He told Tualatin Life that he’s excited to spend retirement seeing the rest of the national parks with his wife.
Baker, who became Tualatin Historical Society (THS) president in 2017, said that his tenure began with a gift membership from his daughter, who knew he loved history. Baker was a member of the society for only a couple of years before becoming president.
“I love history,” Baker said. “The whole family knows I love history.”
Baker said he was originally invited to the society’s membership committee by longtime member Norm Parker, who wanted him to help with technical aspects, such as sprucing up the center’s website.
“Because it involved a computer and most of my peers were octogenarians, they were intimidated, so I came on and helped with that,” Baker said. “Then after a year, he (Norm Parker) asked me to be the president.”
Baker oversaw and helped plan plenty of projects during his time as president. He told Tualatin Life that his involvement in efforts like refurbishing the Galbreath Wagon, sponsoring Tualatin High School scholarships, reestablishing History Day for Tualatin 4th graders and charting the center’s shaky future during the pandemic were highlights he was most proud of.
“Those are the kinds of things that stick in my mind as great things we accomplished during that time period,” Baker said. “We tried to establish a certain structure to everything that we did.”
The Galbreath Wagon, a monument to Oregon pioneer history that currently sits in the shade behind the Tualatin Heritage Center, was a project largely spearheaded by Baker and, while immensely challenging to coordinate, is now an important testament to Tualatin’s past.
“The Galbreath Wagon is gonna be the burr in my saddle for the rest of my life,” Baker said. “I worked in the semiconductor industry, and that wagon was one of the biggest challenges of my life.”
Baker said another hurdle cleared while he was president was the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the society’s funding and membership.
“When COVID hit, all of that was a problem,” Baker said, speaking about funding and renting out the heritage center to members. “We used that time to do something we don’t normally do, first of all, we went and asked for grants…We also decided to do some of our programs remotely.”
Baker said that after hosting a successful heritage evening in 2020, which accrued virtual attendance levels and donation amounts on par with prepandemic events, he was confident in the center’s newfound compatibility with the internet.
“We completely rebuilt the webpage to include things like oral histories, our old photos and our newer photos and recent programs,” Baker said. “Getting over COVID was a big challenge; living through that. We came out of it very healthy financially, numberwise and everything else.”
THS member Sandra Lafky said that Baker brought a “fresh energy” with him when he became president of the board.
“Ross has promoted awareness of the THS in the community by posting clever announcements and program invitations on our website and in emails,” Lafky said in an email to Tualatin Life. “He always made a point of getting to know new members and visitors to the Heritage Center. He acknowledged other members’ contributions. He had strong opinions on some things, but listened to other people’s ideas, and if he disagreed, it was always with respect.”
Looking Forward
Although he has stepped aside as president, Baker said he still planned to play an active role in the historical center’s upcoming plans and discussed some of his ideas for the future. One of those was a restorative rework of the society’s archives, which Baker said could have “some holes” in certain areas.
“We look at our archives, for example, and we see some holes,” Baker said. “We’re asking the community to help us collect those things.”
Baker briefly touched on a variety of subjects the historical society was eyeballing, mentioning plans for 1950s plane propellers, Ice Age erratics and water fountains.
Baker said he also wanted to see more work put into sharing the history of Tualatin’s native tribes, explaining that he didn’t think the center had sufficiently represented the tribes’ time in the valley.
“I hope in the future we’ll do more to give them the respect they’re due,” Baker said. “There’s so much more that we could do with the First Peoples in sharing what a lot of people in Tualatin want to know about but don’t know about.”
In the wake of Baker’s term ending, the Tualatin Historical Society has begun the hunt for a new candidate, while THS Vice President April Wicker presides in the interim. Baker said he wanted to become more of a “task-guy” going forward, limited to assisting with the final stages of projects.
Baker said he was grateful for the relationships he had formed with other board members and credited them with helping him achieve many of his goals as president.
“My fellow colleagues on the board, they’re amazing,” Baker said. “The people that are on this board from the historical society, they just live and breathe Tualatin history, and without their cooperation, we really couldn’t have done anything.”
