Charles P. Baker III

Charles Pitman Baker III was born on June 24, 1925, in Philadelphia, to Charles Pitman Baker Jr. and Jane Florence Curran Baker. He grew up in the old Colonial Hotel at 11th and Spruce Streets in Washington Square West, where his father was the manager, and liked to tell stories of dropping water balloons on passing pedestrians from the hotel windows. His mother died when he was 11. He spent his summers in Ocean City, New Jersey, learning to skipper sailboats as a member of the Ocean City Yacht Club.

At the Haverford School he played every sport he could and was a star squash player. His 1943 senior yearbook said classmates called him "the Arm" because of "the vicious way he wields a racket." He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point with the class of 1946 and deployed to Europe after the end of World War II. His family said he served as an officer in the Berlin Airlift and was stationed at Nuremberg during the war crimes trials. He spent nearly eight years in the Army and rose to captain.

After leaving the Army, Baker returned to Philadelphia and in the 1950s took over his family's small chemical company, C.P. Baker & Co. Over the next 25 years he grew it from a struggling firm with three employees into a successful mid-sized business, then sold it in 1980.

That same year he and his wife, Louise, founded Baker Industries as a two-person operation in their garage in Strafford, Pennsylvania. Their youngest son, Justin, had an intellectual disability and severe epilepsy that made it hard to keep conventional work, and he became the first employee. "We decided, if we're going to start something like this, let's go for the people who need it the most," Baker told The Inquirer in 1998, "the ones who are least employable."

The venture, first incorporated as a for-profit company, became a nonprofit headquartered in Malvern, with a warehouse in Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood that opened in 1988. It contracts light industrial and office work from hundreds of businesses and pays workers an hourly wage while offering training and support, with the motto "providing a steppingstone to regular employment." More than 12,500 people with physical and intellectual disabilities, substance use disorders, recent periods of incarceration and housing insecurity have worked there. "We have a philosophy of work as rehabilitation," he told the Daily News in 1988. Baker served as the unpaid president until 2002 and then on the board of directors until his death.

Baker met Louise Wilhelm, known to friends as Weezie, in Ocean City, and they married in January 1955. They had three children, Charles IV, Sandra and Justin, and were married for 70 years until her death in 2025 at 93.

He was an avid squash player, skier and sailor. He won the U.S. national hardball singles squash championship six times in the 80 and older division from 2006 to 2016, the last at age 90, and served as the tournament's volunteer director. He skied into his 70s, sailed into his 80s and played squash and tennis at the Merion Cricket Club past his 100th birthday. "I just say keep active," he told WHYY in 2025. "Don't sit back and do nothing but keep active and have a purpose." He attended Wayne Presbyterian Church, wore bow ties, sang show tunes and wrote corny poems on birthday cards.

Charles P. Baker III died on Wednesday, September 16, 2026, at the age of 101, of congestive heart failure at the HarborChase assisted living community in Wilmington, Delaware. He had formerly lived in Radnor, Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Inquirer published his obituary on September 22, 2026. He was survived by his three children, four grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. A celebration of his life was planned for October 17, 2026, at Wayne Presbyterian Church, where the family said bow ties were optional but encouraged.

Baker Industries has employed and trained more than 12,500 people and continues to operate in Malvern and Philadelphia. In 1991 it was named an inspirational Point of Light by President George H.W. Bush, and in 2004 Baker and his wife received the legacy award for community generosity from the Chester County Community Foundation. "Charlie and Weezie Baker believed there is healing in work," colleagues wrote on his 101st birthday. "Not just jobs. Work." Baker Industries president Nic Watson said: "We will follow their example for years to come."