LaMar Baker

Baker was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended public schools in Chattanooga and then David Lipscomb College (now Lipscomb University) from 1936 to 1938. In 1940 he received a bachelor of science degree from Harding University in Searcy, Arkansas. In World War II he was in the United States Army Air Corps (now the United States Air Force), serving from 1942 to 1946.

Baker was a successful Chattanooga-area businessman prior to his election to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1966. In 1968 he was elected to the Tennessee State Senate. In 1970 he received the Republican nomination for the Tennessee Third Congressional District to replace Bill Brock, who was elected to the United States Senate.

Baker served two terms as a U.S. Representative. He was reelected fairly handily in the Republican landslide year of 1972, during which he was also a delegate to the Republican National Convention, but in 1974 he was defeated for reelection by moderate Democrat Marilyn Lloyd.

Two factors were involved in this defeat. One was the general unpopularity of Republicans in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the resignation of President Richard Nixon earlier that year, which was played out in many usually competitive and marginally Republican districts throughout the country. The other was the fact that Mrs. Lloyd was the widow of a popular former Chattanooga television news anchor, Mort Lloyd, who had won the Democratic nomination to face Baker and who had then been killed in a light-airplane accident on his way to celebrate his victory; the Democratic Party then chose his wife to succeed him as Congressional nominee.

From 1981 to 1985, Baker served as the regional representative to the United States Secretary of Transportation. Baker lived out his later years in Nashville and is buried in that city's Woodlawn Cemetary.