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Indeed, he wrote in 1974 that while attending Harvard Business School two decades earlier, “what I really did manage to accomplish was the one truly brilliant act of my life: I met, pursued, and won my wife.” His family, he said, was “easily the nicest thing that has ever happened to me.” Mr. Baker, who turned down the chance to be a Republican candidate for Massachusetts governor in 1986 and then became a trusted adviser to his namesake son, Charlie Baker, when he was elected to that post in 2014, was 97 when he died Saturday in the North Hill senior living community in Needham. Leaving Harbridge House to return to Washington in 1984, Mr. Baker served as an undersecretary in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Then he started teaching at Northeastern University’s business school, where he became a business administration professor. “Charlie was special,” said Dan McCarthy, an emeritus university distinguished professor of global management and innovation at Northeastern. “The students loved him right away and he loved the students — there was a great chemistry,” McCarthy said. “He had no airs, no pretense with the students. He treated everybody with the greatest respect, with total dignity, and made everybody feel important. No surprise that he received a couple of teaching awards.” That Mr. Baker was as at ease in front of a classroom as he was chairing a boardroom didn’t surprise those who knew him best. “He was a very interesting, multifaceted man,” said his son Alex of Cape Neddick, Maine. “Dad was incredibly intelligent, incredibly articulate, so well-read, and had an incredible memory, yet he also had a very funny, playful side.” He also created ways for those he knew, or had barely met, to engage in meaningful conversations. At North Hill, “he started a book club, he started an issues forum, he started all kinds of things that became part of the fabric of the community,” said his son Charlie, who is now president of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and is officially Charles D. Baker IV. After living in Needham and Rockport, Mr. Baker moved a dozen years ago to North Hill with Betty Baker, whom he called “my blessed wife” and “my beloved” during a lengthy 2018 interview with the Globe, most of which was unpublished. The couple raised three sons, including Jonathan, who now lives in Putnam, Conn., and passed along their values, not least that “you can disagree with someone and still love them,” Alex said. In a home where spirited dinner table discussions were commonplace, Betty was a lifelong Democrat, while Charles was a Republican who had worked in the Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan administrations. Close at hand were reference books and encyclopedias that everyone consulted to back up facts and buttress opinions. As their sons moved through high school and college toward careers, the couple advised them to find pursuits they really liked, were good at, and allowed them to make a difference. “Service matters,” Charlie said of his parents’ approach to life. “I grew up wanting to be of service because that’s what dad did and that’s what mom did. They were both big service people.” One of three siblings, Charles Duane Baker III was born in Newburyport on June 21, 1928. His father, Charles Jr., was head of personnel for a clothing store when he became ill and lost his eyesight. His mother, Elizabeth Little Baker, a Smith College graduate, was active in civic affairs and was from a prominent Newburyport banking family. Mr. Baker attended Harvard College briefly after high school, then served in the Navy as World War II ended. He returned to finish a bachelor’s degree at Harvard in 1951. Recalled to the Navy during the Korean War, he subsequently graduated from Harvard Business School in 1955. During those years he met Elizabeth Ghormley, a Wellesley College student, “on a double date with my best friend,” he said in the2018 interview. “I never had another date with anyone.” They married in 1955. Mrs. Baker, who had been involved with Career and Volunteer Advisory Service in Boston and served on the board of Family Services of Greater Boston, died in 2016. Mr. Baker worked for Westinghouse and the United Research Inc. management consulting firm before being hired by Harbridge House in 1965. As an executive there, he wrote business memos that “used metaphors from literature and history to get his points across, and also from sports,” said Herb Selesnick, a former vice president. Likening project leaders to football players, Selesnick said, Mr. Baker wanted quarterbacks who stayed in the pocket and had high completion rates, instead of scramblers who threw interceptions. Mr. Baker also served on boards of institutions such as McLean Hospital, which posted its first operating surplus in six years while he chaired the board, noted Dr. Scott L. Rauch, past president and psychiatrist in chief at McLean. Along with helping guide McLean during challenging fiscal times, Mr. Baker worked to ensure that the institution would continue to grow in the Town of Belmont. “Perhaps as an extension of his national leadership roles at HHS, he was ahead of his time in recognizing the importance of behavioral and mental health,” said Rauch, who added that Mr. Baker “was regarded as a wonderful mentor to his colleagues — from fellow board members to senior management of the hospital.” In addition to his three sons, Mr. Baker leaves five grandchildren and a great-grandchild. A gathering to celebrate his life and work will be announced. “Leadership is partly knowing when you’re supposed to do something and doing it,” Mr. Baker said in 2018. Mr. Baker practiced that approach in his personal life as well as in his professional work. “He was always interested in learning about others and finding meaningful connections with others,” said his son Jonathan. “He really had a gift for making those he met feel comfortable and appreciated.” Though in many ways a man of his era, Mr. Baker also “was also somebody who continued to grow and learn,” Alex said. “When I came out to my parents in 1981, he very quickly moved through, ‘Oh my God, my son is gay’ ” and shifted into problem-solving: “How can I make sure my son has a good life?” In 2023, as he prepared to leave the governorship, Charlie Baker said his father had “always been my number one adviser.” Practical and analytical with everything, the elder Mr. Baker was disarmingly direct when he explained in 2018 why he chose not to enter the 1986 governor’s race, despite some top Republicans urging him to do so. “I thought there were better qualified people to run for the governorship than I was,” Mr. Baker said. “That’s completely consistent with the way I think he thought about most stuff,” Charlie said on Sunday. “He had plenty of confidence in his own abilities, but he was not a guy who was driven by his ego at all.”
