Blaine Ralph Bake

Blaine Ralph Bake, 71, died Monday, June 1, 2015, at home in Rexburg, Idaho, after a long illness. He was born February 26, 1944, in Burley, Idaho to Eural and Nila (Gruwell) Bake. Blaine’s father was a genuine cowboy and Blaine lived on ranches in Nevada, Florida and Prescott, Arizona. Blaine learned to work hard and always loved the outdoors despite the fact he spent his professional career primarily in a classroom.

Blaine attended ASU in Tempe, Arizona before serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Kentucky and Tennessee. Blaine earned his bachelor’s and master’s degree at BYU in Provo, Utah where he majored in genealogy and library science.

As a child Blaine had developed a love of family history by helping his mother do genealogical research. In 1971 he joined the faculty at Ricks/BYU-Idaho and for the next 35 years he taught classes in family history and served as the university archivist.

Blaine was also a volunteer fire fighter and EMT for many years and worked with Jan Harrop to develop the Emergency Medical Technician program at Ricks.

Blaine married Margaret Ruth Barrett in the Mesa, Arizona temple in 1968. Six daughters were eventually born to that union.

Always an active member of the LDS church, Blaine served in many callings. He loved being scoutmaster despite the fact that he had no sons, and he loved serving in the Primary nursery. He became the third bishop of the Rexburg 8th Ward just three months after the Teton Dam flood devastated his entire ward. For many years Blaine was director of the local Family History Center and was on the Idaho State Historical Records Advisory Board.

Seeing the need to create a data base of marriage records, for over three decades Blaine visited county courthouses in Idaho and surrounding states where he copied over 700,000 marriage records by hand. His students transcribed the data which resulted in the Western States Historical Records Index.

He worked with colleague Fred Woods on another project to create the Mormon Immigration Index containing over 94,000 stories of LDS immigration to the United States.

After retirement from BYU-Idaho in 2006, Blaine served several LDS Church Service missions to the Church History Library in Salt Lake City. His last mission was to visit courthouses in Idaho and negotiate contracts for records to be microfilmed by the LDS Church.

His declining health made it impossible for him to continue travelling so instead he devoted many hours to arbitrating over half a million records for the Family Search Indexing program.

Blaine is survived by wife, Margaret; daughters, Marlaine (Rusty) Davis, of Salem, OR, Sarah (Christopher) Baldwin, of Menlo Park, CA, Nila Jeanne (John) Core, of Worland, WY, Alissa (Joe) Dell, of Littleton, CO, Hannah Bake, of Rexburg, and Marnie (Weston) Andrew, of Logan, UT; 12 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren; brothers: Ken (Stella) Bake, of Pismo Beach, CA, and Guy (Lissette) Bake, on a mission in Guatemala; and sisters: Bonnie (Wayne) Balls, of Mesa, AZ, and Mary Healy of Grass Valley, CA.

He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Rodney Lester Bake.

Funeral services will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, June 6, 2015 at the Rexburg North Stake Center (314 East 2nd North) with Bishop Brian Memmott conducting. The family will receive friends at the stake center one hour prior to services. Burial will be in the View, Idaho cemetery.

Contributions in his memory may be made to LDS Humanitarian Services.

SOURCE: Find A Grave.com