TEXAS TITANS
James A. Baker, III
James Addison Baker, III was born on April 28, 1930, in Houston to James A. Baker Jr. and Ethel Bonner. Baker’s early childhood was a crash course in the world of polite manners, hard work, and respect for adult authority. He was born into a family of means. His mother’s father was a very successful businessman, and the Baker family managed the state’s most prestigious law firm and had engaged in various successful business endeavors with each generation. Baker said his parents didn’t spoil him, courtesy of a frugal father who had little regard for the material things in life.
There were no fancy automobiles or lavish spending allowances, rather a comfortable two-story home and membership to two country clubs. If there was any monetary value assigned to a promise, it was for Baker to collect a $1,000 reward for not smoking or drinking until the age of twenty-one...
“I didn’t collect,” he recalled, “though I managed to wait until I was eighteen for my first taste of hard liquor.”
Baker Heads East
Baker departed the Lone Star State and headed east to attend the Hill School. Going from Houston, Texas, to Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in his junior year of high school was an adjustment, but by the following year, he was elected to the student government, captained the Hill tennis team, and established friendships that he still has to this very day. His grades were good, but not great, yet he gained admission to Princeton University — a school he calls...
“The destination of choice for many young American men of Scottish heritage, particularly those from the South.”
His competitive streak meant a continuation of tennis, but with so many nationally ranked players, Baker opted for the rigors of rugby, which led to a spring break trip with his teammates to Bermuda in 1950 where he met Mary Stuart McHenry, also on spring break from Finch College in New York. While Baker’s first few years at Princeton were more geared toward social activities than academic life, he found his passion leaned toward history and the classics, admitting to having no interest whatsoever in math and science. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history in 1952.
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The Marine from Texas
The study of history seemed to go hand in hand with an eventual law degree. After graduation, young Baker fully believed he would attend law school and then return to Houston to the very firm founded by his family. But before law school could be entertained, American boys were being shipped to the Korean Peninsula for the ensuing conflict that lasted for three long years, taking the lives of more than 40,000 American soldiers, while wounding more than 100,000. Baker wanted to enlist, but it was too late to join the ROTC program at Princeton, so instead, he opted for the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Course.
Baker was stationed in the Mediterranean for six months, returning home to wed Mary Stuart in her hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Following his discharge from the Marines, he and Mary Stuart moved to Austin, Texas, in 1954, where Baker enrolled in law school at the University of Texas at Austin, graduating with honors. The next move? Houston, naturally.
According to Baker...“We never considered settling anywhere except Houston. My family was there. So, too, was Baker Botts, the firm where three James A. Bakers before me had hung their shingles.”
But with the family firm having a strict anti-nepotism rule, Baker joined Andrews, Kurth, Campbell & Bradley in 1957, working under the close supervision of Harry Jones, which Baker admits was a tremendous opportunity.
But life can have its twists and turns, and for Baker, losing his wife Mary Stuart to breast cancer was a crushing reminder of just how delicate and precious life can be. He turned to his family and faith for strength during that time, and also to his friend George Bush, who stayed by his side. Other than close family members of Mary Stuart, Bush and his wife, Barbara, were the last friends to visit with Mrs. Baker before she fell into a coma, never to regain consciousness.
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Tragedy Strikes
Business was booming, and life was grand for Baker as he approached the age of forty. He was happily married and in love, and had a family that had grown considerably in recent years — now with four boys: James IV (Jamie), Mike, John, and Doug.
“Houston was my world, and I never dreamed of living anywhere else or doing anything besides being a lawyer,” Baker once said. “Politics was not in the picture. The most that can be said of me politically is that I voted...in some elections anyway.”
According to Baker, “What sometimes doesn’t come through is his competitive spirit and steely determination, which I first encountered on the tennis court and which strengthened him for success in business and politics.”
Their friendship carried over to the political arena as Bush sought — once again — one of Texas’s US Senate seats in 1970. He brought Baker on board, and despite Bush’s loss to Lloyd Bentsen, the experience further strengthened their personal and professional relationship. Baker is very open about his friendship with Bush.
“I have admired his success in everything he’d undertaken in his life..." Baker refers to their careers in the political arena as “inextricably linked, and to a large degree, mutually reinforcing since 1970.”
A Friendship is Born
James A. Baker, III first met George Herbert Walker Bush in 1959 in Houston, Texas. Bush had just moved his family and his company, Zapata Offshore Company, from Midland, Texas. In talking about their long friendship, Baker is quick to point out that over the years, he’s had a plethora of names for Bush — first George, then Bushie, Mr. Vice President, Mr. President, and most recently, Jefe (that’s Spanish for the boss).
Their mutual passion for tennis and their back-to-back victories as the Houston Country Club men’s doubles champions in 1966 and 1967 led decades later to both being inducted into the Texas Tennis Hall of Fame. As Baker tells it...
Neither one of us had a partner for the doubles matches. And so, they put us together. And that’s how we became friends...We first became tennis doubles partners.”
Bush was genuine, personable, caring, and considerate of others — traits that Baker said really come through when you spend one-on-one time with Bush.
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