Charles Baker and his wife, Louise, inside the Baker Industries building in Malvern in 2003.
He won the US national hardball singles squash championship six times in the 80-and-older division between 2006 and 2016.
“We decided, if we’re going to start something like this, let’s go for the people who need it the most,” Baker told The Inquirer in 1998, “the ones who are least employable. The idea behind the organisation came from the Bakers’ own experience. Away from work, Baker remained active for much of his life. He was a squash player, skier and sailor. He skied into his 70s, sailed into his 80s and continued playing squash and tennis at the Merion Cricket Club until recently.
He served as its unpaid president until 2002 and then continued on its board of directors.
“We have a philosophy of work as rehabilitation,” he told the Daily News in 1988. “Charlie and Weezie Baker believed there is healing in work,” colleagues at Baker Industries said in a Facebook tribute on his 101st birthday in June. “We need employers who will look at what these people are doing now instead of what they have done before,” he told the Daily News in 1998. A foundation official told The Inquirer at the time that the couple “went above and beyond their own self-interest. Nic Watson, president of Baker Industries, said Baker’s example would continue to guide the organisation. “I was grateful to have their guidance,” Watson said, “and we will follow their example for years to come.”
Baker described the approach as more than simply giving people jobs. “The goal is to show these people they can do a whale of a lot more than they think they can do. Baker remained involved with the organisation for decades. Colleagues later remembered the work he and Louise had built around the idea that employment could play an important role in helping people move forward. “Not just jobs. Work. Showing up. Being part of something. Contributing alongside others. He also called on other employers to focus on a person’s present circumstances rather than only their past.
