Ann Burnett Baker died on February 28, 2025, at Candler Hospital, in Savannah, Georgia. She was 71 years old.
She was born on October 10, 1953, in Mobile, Alabama, to Gaines and Dorothy Burnett. From an early age, two character traits came into sharp focus that would endure throughout her life. First, she demonstrated a natural condition for seeing the world through an optimistic lens, always looking for the good in others and, more times than not, finding it. Second, born to a World War II veteran and a nurse, she was conditioned to always help others, living out John Wesley’s “do all the good you can” credo that undergirded her Methodist faith. She was, in every possible way, a good person, who sought to do good in every area of her life.
She graduated from Madison College (now James Madison University) in 1975, and the medical technologist training program at Roanoke Memorial Hospital in 1976, committed to serving others and doing good as a medical technologist at Eastern State Mental Hospital in Williamsburg, Virginia. While at Madison in 1974, a chance meeting in the dining hall with Sam Baker would lead to their marriage on July 10, 1976. She would be his partner in everything they would do for the next 48 years, moving across the country six times in support of his career in college athletics. The family they would build together is the lasting legacy to her belief in doing good.
She would inculcate all three of her children, Zeb (born 1979), Elizabeth Ann (born 1981), and Josie (born 1988) — with this spirit, which they would take with them into their lives and careers in higher education and social work, through which they would try to emulate her determination to make other people’s lives better.
In her years as a wife and a mother, she created a home overflowing with happiness and love. You could find her on most days baking cookies, rolling out homemade noodles for dinner, or finishing up the buttons on a new dress that she had handsewn. This was on top of having led a Brownie troop meeting, or planning one of her children’s classroom parties as room mother, or taking the kids to a midweek basketball game. Christmases were especially happy affairs, and birthdays became daylong family holidays. She did everything so gracefully that it all seemed so effortless, though she worked hard at the homelife she built for her family. She was the one who made everything in her family’s life go.
In the last decade of her life, she took immense pleasure in becoming a grandmother, when her only grandchild, James, was born in 2015. Once again, she conjured all of the magic for him that she had created in her own children’s lives. Her pasta and fried chicken became one of his favorite meals, just as it had been for his mother and aunt and uncle before him. Likewise, in that final decade, she and her husband would enjoy their retirement, spending just nearly every waking moment together. Their midweek road trips to eat lunch at Barbara Jean’s on Saint Simon’s Island or Raising Cane’s in Mount Pleasant made their children green with envy. Fabric stores across the South will feel her absence, as she was one of their most dedicated customers. So, too, will the many doctors, nurses, and receptionists in the medical centers and practices that she visited regularly in these years, making friends with her signature ease.
She is survived by her husband, her grandson, and her children and their partners, Maria Johnson, Robert Howell, and Harrison Fields. She is also survived by her brother and sister-in-law, Buddy and Lorraine Burnett, and her nieces, Stephanie and Kelsey; her beloved uncle, David Stewart; and close friends from college and her many moves across the country.
In lieu of flowers, her family requests that donations be sent to Azalea Health, attn. Christmas Fund, P.O. Box 356, Metter, GA 30439.
Deal Funeral Directors, Statesboro. GA.
