Making a difference is something Barb Baker takes to heart

       Barb Baker, who recently retired from her position as the director of advertising and community relations at Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Company, delivers a speech at a recent conference in Coralville. Baker spent 37 years at GMRC and was involved in helping build communities and schools across the 13 states that GMRC serves. Her last day at the company was Dec. 12.

By J.O. Parker
 
      Barb Baker, a long-time Grinnell resident and 37-year employee of Grinnell Mutual Reinsurance Company (GMRC), has retired.
          Baker’s last day was Dec. 12.
         Baker, who held three different positions at the company during her tenure, is probably most noted for her role as director of advertising and community relations, a job she held for 22 years.
       “I was in charge of all of our company advertising (and giving) in 13 states,” she said. “It was my opportunity to introduce GMRC to all of the communities we serve and offer community support.”
       This included funding community and school activities and events, supporting the fine arts and providing aide to teachers.
           “Not only financially, but with in-kind donations,” said Baker.
        For example, Baker and GMRC worked with the City of Grinnell as the lead contributor for the Grinnell Mutual Family Aquatic Center, as well as provided several major gifts and grants to the Grinnell Regional Medical Center, Grinnell Fire Department and Central Park’s renovation and adaptive playground equipment projects.
         “During Covid, we worked with several other community funders and supporters to establish a small business emergency fund,” noted Baker. “We also helped establish a community fund to assist nonprofits with DEI education and training.”
        Baker said the partnership between Grinnell Mutual and the Grinnell Middle School is the longest standing partners-in-education program in our district.
           Baker called her job, a “Department of One.”
         And when asked what she enjoyed the most about her job, Baker said she most enjoyed working with a variety of supporters in both Grinnell and many other communities to help resolve or reduce social and economic barriers for our resident and organizations.
          “Having the opportunity to meet so many compassionate and hard-working peers, who have become my friends, is the ultimate reward.”
Background
        Baker and her husband, Mike, a now retired long-time math teacher and current assistant football coach at Grinnell High School, met at the University of Iowa.
      Growing up, Baker wanted to be a veterinarian, but after spending two years as her high school newspaper editor, she switched gears to become a journalist. 
          She went on to earn a degree in journalism in 1983.
       Mike, who grew up in Cedar Rapids and attended high school in Minnesota, earned a degree in finance from Iowa.
         At the time, the couple was living in Iowa City.
       After graduation from Iowa, Baker, who grew up in the northeast town of West Union, landed a job at KWWL television station in Waterloo. Her goal was to become a sport’s editor, but that didn’t work out.
        “I wanted to be a sports reporter but that job went to a college athlete,” recalled Baker, who worked at the station for about a year. “I ended up being a news reporter.”
        At the station, Baker covered stories in both Waterloo and the Cedar Rapids bureau.
       “I covered the airport commission’s vote to expand the airport in Cedar Rapids. Which was pretty big at the time,” she said.
       She also covered a little boy from the deep south whose Make-a-Wish wish was to tour the John Deere plant in Waterloo.
        “I served as the first television photographer at a murder trial in Blackhawk County,” said Baker. “This was one of the first, if not the first, opportunity for TV cameras in the courtroom. All the reporters covering the story for the three Eastern Iowa TV stations had to sit in another room and watch the videotape of the trial.”
         “I also helped the KWWL team cover a prisoner escape and hostage situation in Northeast Iowa,” she said.
       While Baker was at KWWL, Mike got the teaching bug and returned to Iowa to earn his teaching degree in math. He completed his student teaching at Cedar Rapids Prairie High School, where he also coached a sophomore girls’ basketball team and worked as an assistant football coach.
        He graduated from Iowa with his second degree in December 1987.
        In 1988, Mike applied for and accepted a position at Grinnell High School as a math teacher and girls’ basketball coach.
         Mike said when he and Barb moved to Grinnell, it was the smallest town they had lived in together.
        “I thought we would be here for a couple years and move on,” he said in an earlier interview. “You get here and have a couple kids and five years becomes 10 years and so on.”
       And to Baker’s surprise when she and Mike arrived in town, the Grinnell Superintendent at the time was Clem Bodensteiner, who just happened to be her long-time neighbor while growing up in West Union.
“That was such a coincidence,” said Baker.
        Mike began his teaching and coaching career at Grinnell and Baker was hired at GMRC. She said at the time, there wasn’t a lot of options for a journalist in Grinnell, so she found the claims position at Grinnell Mutual a little by luck and a little by chance.
       Her first job was working as a liability claims adjuster, a position she held for seven years. She then switched gears to become a corporate claims trainer before landing her dream position in 2003.
       In retirement, Baker and Mike plan to spend time with their family, teaching at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business, and continuing to serve on several state and local Board of Directors, including the St. Francis Manor Foundation, the Iowa Association of Business and Industry Foundation, and chairing the Iowa Women’s Foundation.
       And on Friday nights in the fall, Mike will walk the sidelines, continuing to make a difference in the lives of young man using his coaching skills while Baker cheers them on from the stands.