Kay Baker

Livestream Link: https://my.gather.app/remember/kay-baker-2026

Kay Baker, age 66, returned home to her loving Heavenly Father on June 4, 2026. She was born in Vernal, Utah, to Vena Collier Baker and Charles Arnold Baker on March 5, 1960, and spent most of her life living in Naples. She attended Naples Elementary School, Vernal Junior High School, and Uintah High School, graduating in 1978.

Kay was very active in 4-H growing up, belonging to clubs led by her mother and other women in Naples. She loved competing at the Uintah County Fair and the Utah State Fair, attending youth conferences, and participating in the annual 4-H summer camp in the Uinta Mountains. As a teen, she was chosen to represent Utah at the National 4-H Congress based on the outstanding quality of her record book. This honor included an expenses-paid trip to Chicago, where she spent five days meeting with 4-H youth from all 50 states.

Kay received a scholarship to Utah State University. Influenced by her positive experiences with 4-H, she chose to major in home economics, hoping to work as a county home economist. She also took art classes, having drawn many cartoons for her friends. And having completed a full year of university calculus while still in high school, she also picked up a few advanced math classes “just for fun."

When she returned to USU for her second year, a professor from the year before, impressed by her keen analytical mind, had moved her enrollment to the College of Engineering without asking. She tried to change this but finally agreed to give engineering a go first. She learned two things that year: she disliked engineering, but she truly loved math. She consequently shifted to the College of Education and earned a composite bachelor's degree in mathematics, computer science, and applied statistics, graduating in 1983.

Eager to see more of the nation, Kay applied for teaching jobs in dozens of schools, none of them in Uintah School District. While awaiting replies, she was offered – and declined – a job teaching math at Uintah High School. After hearing nothing from any other schools, she reluctantly signed a one-year contract to teach in Vernal. Over the next few days, she received dozens of letters from various other school districts, many of them postmarked weeks earlier. Kay always saw this as divine intervention.

She taught math and statistics at Uintah High School for the next 39 years. She was assigned to advise the Sterling Scholar program in 1986 and continued in that role until her retirement in 2022. When her former calculus teacher Curtis May retired in 1998, she took over as department head and also as the concurrent enrollment calculus teacher. She sponsored the UHS Math Club for many years and worked intensively with students participating in the State Math Contest, helping them bring home numerous awards.

Kay knew she would need a postgraduate degree to keep university calculus in the high school, so she enrolled at the University of New Hampshire in 1992 and spent several consecutive summer breaks engaged in intensive coursework and sitting comprehensive exams, earning an MST degree in mathematics. This qualification also allowed her to do some additional teaching for USU, though her focus was always on her high school students.

The students in her classroom all knew that Kay was passionate about math, passionate about learning, passionate about life, and – most importantly – passionate about them. She constantly innovated and refined her teaching methods to meet the needs of individual students and then spent literally thousands of hours of unpaid time after school individually tutoring anyone who wanted one-on-one help. Many who had struggled with math before came to love the beauty and power of it in her classroom. She eventually lost count, but Kay loved trying to keep track of how many of her former students went on to earn PhDs, work as engineers and doctors, and so forth.

She also loved seeing her former students flourish in all other facets of life. Hundreds of them stayed in close contact with her, inviting her to graduation ceremonies, weddings, mission farewells, baby showers, baby blessings, mission reports, and other important milestones. She always attended these, sometimes travelling hours to do so. Many former students visited her in her home or took her out for lunch. Teaching was never just a job for Kay, and everyone knew it.

Kay was a lifelong and faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a youth, she thrived in the Young Women program and cherished her adult advisers. As an adult, she held many callings but particularly loved serving the young women in her ward and stake, including being involved in many summer camps. Like her students, these girls knew that Kay was personally invested in them and would be there for them for the rest of her life. She was the perfect mix of love and discipline, fun and seriousness – and was always up to scare a new cohort of girls with a recitation of her infamous version of ‘Thump-Drag’, a tale she had first heard as a girl.

Kay was called to work in the Vernal Utah Temple in 2022 and served there diligently until two days before she passed away. She found boundless peace and joy in the temple and loved the women whom she served with. Being in the House of the Lord was a highlight of her week.

Despite some earlier health challenges, Kay was blessed to be physically active until the day she passed away. She loved every moment that she got to spend engaged in the lives of her family members. She had special fondness for her nieces’ and nephews’ children and had gone to Dinosaur National Monument and to get frozen custard with some of them just days before her death. Many family members saw her as a second mother or grandmother.

Cause of death was a sudden, massive hemorrhage in Kay’s brain that robbed her of her ability to live without mechanical life support. Mercifully, family members were all able to say good-bye to her in person or via FaceTime before she left this mortal world. Kay was preceded in death by her parents, her sister Arlynn Baker, and her nephew Morgan Baker. She is survived by three brothers: Evan (Holly) Baker and Dean (Jolene) Baker, both of Naples, UT; and Brett Baker of Canberra, Australia. She is also survived by nephews Levi (Ashley) Baker of Smithfield, Utah; Travis (Marcie) Baker of Layton, Utah; Brian (Courtney) Baker of Neola, Utah; and Jeffrey (Lara) Baker of Roosevelt, Utah; nieces Megan (Drew) Long of Vernal, Utah; and Rachel (Hunter) Young, of South Jordan, Utah; plus 17 beloved grandnieces and grandnephews.

Her funeral service will be held at the Naples Chapel (2313 South 1500 East, Naples, Utah) on Saturday, June 13, at 10am, and her interment will be in the Vernal Memorial Park. Viewings will take place at the chapel on Friday evening (6–8pm) and on Saturday morning (9–9:45am) under the direction of Blackburn Vernal Mortuary. All who knew and loved Kay are invited to attend.

In lieu of flowers, a Kay Baker Memorial scholarship fund has been set up at Venmo: Kay-Baker-Memorial.