Giving back: Greater Morristown remembers Dave Baker, a quiet hero of Vietnam

Dave Baker at 2013 opening of daycare center in Phuoc Dong Province, Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.
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Say the words “unsung hero” around Morristown right now, and you’re likely to hear “Dave Baker” in response.

Baker, a 77-year-old Vietnam veteran, died this month from blood disorders caused,  friends suspect, by wartime exposure to Agent Orange.

Dave Baker, right, and unidentified fellow soldier, during the Vietnam war. Photo courtesy of Ed O’Rourke.

His legacy of quiet good deeds — from mowing lawns for ailing neighbors to funding schools, orphanages and housing in Vietnam–made a lasting impression on a diverse universe of admirers.

Congressmen, cops, bikers, lawyers … they all frequented The Postmark, the Washington Street coin- and stamp shop where Baker shared Vietnamese tea and conversation for more than four decades.

“I think Dave Baker made us all better people. We need more Dave Bakers in the world,” said Morris County Sheriff James Gannon.

Marc Marowitz, owner of the former Morristown Deli, helped Baker collect medical supplies from area hospitals to bring to Vietnam. Gauze, antiseptics, stethoscopes…one year, there were 10 trailer loads, he said.

Dave Baker at 2013 opening of daycare center in Phuoc Dong Province, Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

“He didn’t want recognition,” Marowitz said. “He did it from his heart…he was an unsung hero.”

“Each trip, he would find the poorest villager…and he would build that guy a house, from soup to nuts,” said Ed O’Rourke, a retired Dover police detective who twice accompanied Baker to Vietnam.

“You could see it was a very moving experience for him to go over every time,” O’Rourke said. “He just felt he had to give back.”

CORNELL

Baker, a Morristown High School graduate, went to Vietnam in 1967 and was there for the Tet Offensive in ’68. As a dog handler with the Army’s 529th Military Police Company, he performed reconnaissance patrols with his German shepherd, Cornell.

Military Police officer Dave Baker, with his military dog Cornell, in Vietnam circa 1968.
Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

Trained for ferocity, military dogs saved American lives…by visiting savage fury upon the Viet Cong. Baker had to keep Cornell caged when they were off-duty.

After Baker’s tour, Cornell was euthanized. These fearless animals could not be socialized, Baker once explained to this reporter–after refusing to discuss his exploits for publication.

Baker wore a tattoo bearing Cornell’s likeness. And he gave that name to his pet dogs, noted John Mills III, a fellow Harley aficionado.

Mills often accompanied Baker on Sunday group rides to a Vietnamese restaurant near Little Italy in New York. A “run for chicken soup,” Baker called these scrambles.

Baker threw himself into many interests. He was appointed as a special police officer in the Township, where he grew up. An expert on guns, he held a dealer’s license. He collected artifacts of the Lenni-Lenape tribe. Handy with engines, he babied a 1932 Ford Roadster.

Dave Baker on his Harley with a pet German shepherd he named for his Vietnam War military dog, Cornell. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

“You could turn to Dave for advice on almost any subject and it would be well-founded advice when given. And that man would give you the shirt off his back. Literally,” said Mills, former municipal attorney for Morris Township.

Generosity seemed to come naturally.

“He helped a lot of people. If I needed $500, he would reach in and give me $500,” said Jimmie Hilliard, a retired parking attendant who helped Baker at The Postmark.

They bonded when Hilliard was a Scoutmaster decades earlier. Scouts earned merit badges for coin collecting in those days.

Talk inside The Postmark wasn’t limited to numismatics and philately.

“If you wanted to know what was going on in Morristown, you went in and asked Dave,” said Linda Coutts Snyder, whose family owns the building. “He was bigger than life. Everybody loved him.”

Hilliard, a Democrat, loved verbal jousting with his pal, a Republican with a soft spot for the late tough-guy actor John Wayne. “All the Vietnam guys loved the Duke,” Hilliard said with amusement.

Jimmie Hilliard at The Postmark, where he helped Dave Baker for years. ‘It was a rough couple of days’ coming to grips with Baker’s passing, Hilliard said. He’s pictured here on July 28, 2021, closing down the shop. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

State Assemblywoman Aura Dunn (R-25th Dist.) came to know Baker when she worked around the corner for then-Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen.

Dunn’s father, a Marine, was wounded in the battle of Khe Sanh. Talking with Baker “was very comforting,” she said.

Morris County’s movers and shakers often visited Dave Baker at The Postmark, where he sold collectible stamps and coins, and also operated a federally licensed gun business, near the county courthouse since 1977. Photo by Kevin Coughlin

Baker was generous with his elbow grease, too.

Glenn Coutts Jr’s daughter was stricken with leukemia in 1994.

“Out of nowhere, Dave just began cutting our lawn every week, for a season or two,” Coutts said. “He never accepted any form of repayment, reimbursement or return of favor.”

Sometimes, Baker even felt compelled to mow the grass around the Thomas Paine statue at Burnham Park, according to retired postal carrier John Viola.

A WEDDING TO REMEMBER

Baker won a Harley in a raffle. A newspaper account says he Harleyed to his wedding–surely among the more colorful nuptials of 2006.

Motorcycles line the Green for the September 2006 wedding of Vietnam veteran Dave Baker and Nguyen Thi Ha Thanh. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

Dozens of Baker’s biker brethren lined the historic Morristown Green on that September Saturday for his marriage to Nguyen Thi Ha Thanh.  The couple had met on one of Baker’s civilian trips to Vietnam. She helped him find Vietnamese families who needed houses.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth MacKenzie officiated at the ceremony.

He remembers an enormous, somewhat “sketchy” throng in front of the Patriot’s Farewell fountain.

“I’ve done a lot of outdoor wedding ceremonies, and people keep a distance from the bride and groom. Here, everybody…was right up tight with Dave and Miss Ha,” the judge, now retired, recounted with a laugh.

Superior Court Judge Kenneth MacKenzie officiates at 2006 Morristown wedding of Vietnam veteran Dave Baker and Nguyen Thi Ha Thanh. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

Baker would bring his wife’s daughter and grandson to live with them in America.  He also created a compound in Vietnam, and went twice every year until the pandemic and his declining health fmade travel impossible, Hilliard said.

Dave Baker and Nguyen Thi Ha Thanh, known to friends here as Miss Ha, at their 2006 wedding on the Morristown Green. Jimmie Hilliard is on the far right. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

The veteran started his Vietnam pilgrimages in 1995. He wanted “to put some things to rest, to answer some questions,” he told The Daily Record in 2006.

“Dave saw a lot of things in Vietnam he didn’t want to talk about,”  Randy Block, a fellow coin collector, told Morristown Green.

The movie Platoon got it right, Baker acknowledged to Block. Beyond that, nothing. Block recognized that steely silence — from Holocaust survivors in his own family.

Block choked up a little when discussing Baker.

For two years, when Block’s mind was fogged from kidney dialysis, “he called me every day.”

Block was repaying the favor as Baker underwent transfusions in recent months. “When you go back to Vietnam, I’d like to go with you,” Block told him.

“He said ‘Yeah, we can do a lot of things,'” Block recollected.

“I thought he had another year.”

ELEPHANTS AND OSTRICHES

Those Vietnam trips were fun-filled adventures, according to those who tagged along.

Ed O’Rourke, a fellow motorcyclist and former cop, went in 1998 and 2011.

He got a taste of Baker’s sense of humor on his first night in country. Baker told his friend that tradition required the new guy to buy dinner. Their party included about a dozen people. They savored shrimp and eels at an outdoor barbecue place.

Dave Baker, far right, dines with friends during a visit to Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Ed O’Rourke.

Baker encouraged everybody to order plate after plate.

“He’s laughing. I’m sweating bullets,” related O’Rourke, who feared he would blow all his travel cash on his first evening in Vietnam. “At the end of the night they bring the bill, and this bill just has astronomical numbers on it.”

When O’Rourke’s rollicking dinner mates converted Vietnamese dong into U.S. dollars, the tab came to $20 — including “a ripping tip.”

Dave Baker, second from right, rides elephant in Vietnam. Gesturing behind hin is Ed O’Rourke. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

Years later, in the mountains at Lang Biang, O’Rourke and his wife enjoyed an elephant ride through the jungle. Upon their return, Baker goaded O’Rourke and a buddy.

“If you’re real men, you’ll ride this,” Baker told them, pointing to an ostrich.

Chris Walsh, who was a Denville cop, saddled up first. It was a rough ride.

“I’m thinking it’s really funny, till it’s my turn,” O’Rourke said. “This thing is throwing me into a corrugated steel wall trying to get me off its back. And Baker is over in the corner laughing his — off. I’ve never seen my wife laugh so hard in her life.”

But it was Baker’s charity that really opened O’Rourke’s eyes in Vietnam.

From left, Dave Baker; Ed O’Rourke, then a Dover police detective; and Gerry Dick, a Parsippany police officer; in 1998. Photo courtesy of Ed O’Rourke.

Baker bought truckloads of rice for people. He sponsored an overhang at a preschool, so children could play outside when it rained.

He erected a temple. Pictures of Baker’s late parents, and of a soldier with whom he served, are hanging there. It’s where Baker wanted his ashes to rest, said O’Rourke.

Friends on those trips worried about Baker’s health; they hatched plans for him to get medical care in the Philippines if needed, O’Rourke said.

Baker had serious health problems for 30 years, and battled with the Veterans Administration for disability status, according to Mills.

Little girl at opening of Vietnamese daycare center visited by Dave Baker in 2013. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

Soldiering on, Baker took better care of those around him than of himself, friends said. He clashed with nurses and doctors.

“They would tell him what was wrong with him. He would say ‘No, I know my body,’”  Jimmie Hilliard said.

When word came this month that Baker was fading, O’Rourke drove up from his Florida home in just over 18 hours.  He was with family members at Baker’s bedside when he died at home on July 14.

Baker had refused hospice care and pain meds, despite O’Rourke’s pleading.

“This guy went out about as hard as anybody could go out,” he said.

It was a long drive back to Florida for O’Rourke.

“What a loss, man,” he said. “What a great human being. They just don’t make ’em like that guy anymore.”

A memorial service is anticipated for the fall.

David C. Baker is survived by his wife Nguyen Thi Ha Thanh, his stepdaughter Yuen, and his step grandson Cun; a sister, Patricia Baker Omli (Allan); nephews Douglas, Craig and Steven Omli; niece Susan Omli; and a brother Frank C. Baker (Phyllis). He was predeceased by his father and mother, Frank and Hazel Baker.

Dave Baker on a motorcycle outing. Photo courtesy of Jimmie Hilliard.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. Unreal. I met the guy a few times at the postmark, lived several towns away, but he was still a friend. From the first interaction with Dave, you could just tell that this was the guy freakin everyone knew and loved. I did want to go artifact hunting with him at some point but he was too ill at the time to accompany me. He did take the time to speak to me about some good locations and approaches. Thank you, Dave Baker!

  2. Dave took clothes to orphans in Viet Nam for our South Carolina group, the Sewing Sowers, dedicated to providing handmade clothes for the international community of Sister Mary Beth Lloyd of Villa Walsh. He and his wife Ha distributed the clothes in Vietnamese orphanages and sent us pictures , showing the joy that his selfless work evoked. What a good man! May he rest in peace.

  3. AN INSIGHTFUL SKETCH OF A MORRISTOWN LEGEND WITH A COMPASSIONATE HEART
    AND GENEROUS SPIRIT. A HUMBLE HERO AND PATRIOT. MAY HIS BRIDE OF 15 YEARS
    KNOW THAT WE ARE HERE FOR YOU. JIM CAVANAUGH, CHAPLAIN, AMERICAN LEGION
    POST 59, MORRISTOWN

  4. Dave was wondrous in so many aspects.
    Thank you for your kindness, friendship and compassion in looking for finds around us.
    I still have a map you drew for me several years ago on where I can find my Holy Grail!
    Thank you for believing in me and giving me my first metal detector. I shall seek and find in your honor ~

  5. Dave Baker did a lot for the community and did a lot to keep America safe. I can’t tell you how many of us joined the military too because we looked up to him growing up. Rest well, Sir 💕

  6. I want to honor my dear dear friend and childhood neighbor Dave Baker who did so very much for so many, by posting his recent obituary.
    On my trips home I sat in his shop for hours looking at all his books of photos of his wonderful work he’d accomplished over the years! He was a dear friend of my brother and I, and a true hero…. I got to be friends with his lovely wife Ha and will treasure the gorgeous Vietnamese silk scarf she gave me on our first visit! I’m so sorry for your loss Ha!
    Rest In Peace ‘Uncle’ Dave! Give our Moms & Dads big hugs for me. 💪🙏🏻👍😘♥️🇺🇸♥️😇

  7. This was an excellent piece for a man who’s actions spoke volumes about the person he was. Rest In Peace, neighbor.

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