Bruce Baker

I moved to Minnesota between my junior and senior year, but I still consider myself part of the class of 66. After school I enlisted in the US NAVY, spent 1 year in California, went through SEAL training and went to Viet Nam as part of a special intelligence gathering unit based in Saigon. While there I was injured after 10 months in a freak accident (riding my motorcycle and got hit by a car head on), was sent to Japan for surgery to fix my leg and then sent home to be discharged, with a medical retirement. After the NAVY I went to college at Minnesota State University Mankato and got my BS degree in Business and Law Enforcement. I moved to Rochester MN to join the police department there. After about 4 years I knew that was not for me, so I became a mailman, delivering mail was a whole lot safer then being a cop. Retired from there after 21 years and worked at Wal-Mart for about 4 years as manager of the automotive department. I left there and went to Checker Auto Parts, which later became O'Reilly Auto Parts. Finally in 2010 I retired for the third and final time. Since then my wife and I have been camping with our Travel Trailer. We usually go with a group of up to 6 families and usually invade a corner of some campground and have a roaring good time. We also spend time with our grand-daughters who lives only about 90 miles away (we go there, they come here....that sort of thing). Our other 2 children are in town with us and we see them often. My wife has a horse and my daughter has 2 Arabian horses, so they go riding together a lot, along with our son-in- law. In July we welcomed our grand-son Oliver to our family. We babysit him on Fridays and enjoy watching him grow and develop his personality.

My favorite memories are of Mr. Wordens Home Room and Trig class. Sure did have a lot of fun there, I also especially remember Mr. Johnson for bookkeeping class. Had I stayed in Racine, I would have taken Business Law first semester, and been Mr. Johnsons teaching assistant for the second semester. I had my schedule worked out so that I began with Zero period and was done at lunch and could go home or to a part time job if I so desired. Also the football games (especially Park-Horlick). I never was much of a student in high school, but that does not mean that I did not learn the material, I did fairly well in college, because I knew that was what mattered.