Dora Baker
Dora Ann Ladd Baker (Nov. 9, 1901 – April 12, 1934) was the wife of U.S. Congressman Howard H. Baker Sr., and the mother of U.S. Sen. Howard H. Baker Jr. She was a native of Roane County, and her mother was the first woman to serve as a sheriff in Tennessee.
Early Life
Born Nov. 9, 1901, in the Sugar Grove area of Roane County, Dora Ann Ladd was the daughter of Christopher John Ladd (1876-1927) and Lillie Matilda Cox (1879-1981).
The Sugar Grove area was located on the Clinch River, which is now part of Watts Bar Lake. A set of shoals near where the Clinch River emptied into the Emory River was known as Ladds Shoals. A nearby development just off present-day Interstate 40 in Kingston is known as Laddie Village. The Ladd family goes back several generations in Roane County, to John Crew Ladd, who is buried at Ladd Cemetery off Gallaher View Road. He moved from Virginia to Tennessee and was the second-great-grandfather of Christopher Ladd.
Christopher Ladd, known as Criss, was the sheriff of Roane County in the 1920s. While he was hospitalized at a medical center in the Midwest for an illness, a jailbreak occurred, and his wife, Lillie, was credited with helping to round up the escaped prisoners. Following his death in June 1927, she was appointed sheriff by the Roane County Quarterly Court. She later served as a fraternity mother at the University of Tennessee, and made headlines when she shot at a burglar through a closed door as he attempted to rob the frat house.
Criss and Lillie had five children: Gillis, Myrtle, Joe William and Frankie in addition to Dora Ann, who was the second-oldest.
Family
Dora Ann Ladd married Howard Henry Baker on Feb. 11, 1925 in Kingston. He had just graduated from the University of Tennessee School of Law and was about to open a law firm in his native Huntsville, where the Bakers would move following their marriage. Her husband was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1928, serving a single two-year term. He also served two years on the Scott County Board of Education and was elected attorney general of the 19th Judicial District of Tennessee in 1934. Later, of course, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Howard and Doris had two children: Howard Henry Baker Jr., born in 1925, and Mary Elizabeth Baker, born in 1931.
Howard H. Baker Jr. would later be elected to the U.S. Senate, rising to serve as Majority Leader, was a presidential candidate in 1980, and served as President Ronald Reagan’s White House Chief of Staff.
Mary Elizabeth Baker was crowned Miss Tennessee in the 1951 National Cherry Blossom Festival, and was a professional model. She married U.S. Congressman William C. Wampler from Virginia, and later married George Rogers Clark Stuart, an attorney from Abingdon, Va.
Death
In April 1934, Dora fell ill with appendicitis, as well as cholecystitis, an inflammation of the gallbladder, which was caused by gallstones. She was admitted to Fort Sanders Hospital in Knoxville, Tenn., where she underwent surgery to remove her gallbladder and appendix. However, she developed dilation of the heart after the surgery, which proved to be fatal. She died at 2:10 a.m. on Thursday, April 12, 1934. She was only 32. She was buried at Berry Highland Memorial Cemetery in Knoxville, off Kingston Pike near Papermill Road.
Following Dora’s death, Lillie moved to Huntsville to help raise her grandchildren. The youngest, Mary Elizabeth, was only two at the time. Howard H. Baker Sr. remarried to Irene Bailey, a deputy court clerk in Sevierville, on Sept. 15, 1935 in Middlesboro, Ky.