The Untold Stories Behind Baker Roofing’s Early Years with Frank & Prentiss Baker

[00:00:00] Frank Baker: I think when Prentiss and I started, we first began working on
weekends. Basically, we were slave labor because the layout at our original facility was
very cumbersome ; if you had sheet metal, which we formed ourselves, the sheet metal
shop was upstairs. Material was delivered downstairs, so you had to take the sheets of
metal up thirty-two stairs to where the metalworking equipment was. Of course,
nobody wanted to do that job; it was a friendless job.
[00:00:39] Todd Kavanaugh: Hey there, and welcome to Under the Roof, the official
podcast of Baker Roofing Company. I’m Todd Kavanaugh.
[00:00:45] Matt Elban: And I’m Matt Elban, and we’re here to connect the dots
between the field and the office, leadership and the crew, and values and action.
[00:00:53] Todd Kavanaugh: In each episode, we dive into the stories, lessons, and
updates that matter to our team.
[00:01:00] Matt Elban: From safety and career growth to company milestones and
good old-fashioned storytelling, it’s all about living out what makes Baker, Baker. Let’s
get into it. Welcome back to Under the Roof. If you’ll notice, we’re doing something a
little bit different today; we felt like the conversation warranted it,
[00:01:16] Todd Kavanaugh: …and so did our guests. We’re meeting in person live, and
we’re excited to have you guys. Today, we are here with Prentiss Baker and Frank Baker,
grandsons of our founder, W.P. Baker I, and former owners of the company. We’re here
to learn a little bit about the history of Baker and hear some stories that none of us
have really heard. We mined the Always Good Work book and pulled out some fun ones
that look back several decades. We’re excited to get into it today.
[00:01:49] Matt Elban: One of the questions that I always like to ask up front is: What’s
the most recent book you’ve read, and what did you learn from it? We’ll start with you,
Frank.
[00:01:58] Frank Baker: Probably the most recent book I’ve read was a novel by Colson
Whitehead, a great Black writer who has won the National Book Award twice. It made
me understand our relationship to the community and what part of the community
helped found our company.

[00:02:20] Matt Elban: Very cool. I keep a list of all the books that people recommend,
and I’ve been going through them slowly. I’ll have to add that one to my list. I
appreciate it. Prentiss, how about you?
[00:02:29] Prentiss Baker: Interestingly, my daughter, Kelly, Alex’s mom, has written a
book. I believe it’s called A Hole in the Soul, and it’s a life experience book. To give you
a little more insight, it’s about her experiences with birth and abortion; she’s a very
active pro-life activist. Anyway, it’s a good one.
[00:02:55] Matt Elban: Great. I’ll add that one to the list as well. Appreciate it.
[00:02:58] Prentiss Baker: It’s a good one. Thank you.
[00:03:00] Todd Kavanaugh: One of the first questions we wanted to ask is about
William Prentiss I, as we hear a lot about him. If I were to walk into a room and meet Mr.
Baker the First, what is one of the first things I would notice when shaking his hand or
talking to him?
[00:03:28] Prentiss Baker: He was a short, small man, always dressed impeccably. This
sounds kind of strange for being in the roofing business, but at the stage when I knew
him, he was older and probably didn’t get on many roofs at that point. He had worked
with his hands, particularly in the sheet metal shop, for a big part of his career. He was
soft-spoken. Do you want to add anything else?
[00:03:54] Frank Baker: I think the part about him being impeccably dressed is quite
important because he came from a very, very poor background. He left Harnett County
when he was thirteen years old, I believe. He put everything he owned on a mule and
came to Raleigh alone, with absolutely no education.
[00:04:19] Prentiss Baker: His dad was a tenant farmer. When the kids reached a
certain age, around twelve or thirteen, they would be sent off to the big city of Raleigh
to work and send money back home for the other eight or ten siblings to live on.
Obviously, they didn’t make much money being a tenant farmer.
[00:04:39] Frank Baker: But as he aged and became engaged with Baker Roofing
Company, or Rawls Tin Shop, as it began, I think he always wanted to show that he was
a businessman and a gentleman, regardless of his background. The way he showed that
to the public was through the way he dressed. It was very important for him to be
viewed by his peers as a gentleman.

[00:05:09] Todd Kavanaugh: When I picture your grandfather, I think of that one
specific photo. There’s a woman at a desk with a typewriter, and he is standing behind
her, impeccably dressed in a suit. Frank, I’ve heard that you are specifically known for
your dress, and that is where you got your inspiration. You too are a Baker, but I heard
the suits are part of where you got that inspiration in your life. Is that true?
[00:05:39] Frank Baker: I think that’s essentially accurate, yes. He passed it along to
my dad. To be honest, my dad was not as good a businessman as our grandfather was,
but he was a great gentleman.
[00:05:58] Prentiss Baker: One of the many things he taught us was how to treat
people and how to act.
[00:06:00] Frank Baker: That was very important to him and to our granddaddy.
[00:06:05] Prentiss Baker: Along with Granddad dressing impeccably, it was very
evident that he was a humble man, which had a big impact on us.
[00:06:15] Matt Elban: We’ve talked quite a bit about your grandfather. We were
wondering, could you tell us a little bit about your grandmother? What was she like?
[00:06:22] Prentiss Baker: She was a good grandma. She let Granddad be the man of
the house. She was understated, I would say, and a good lady.
[00:06:32] Frank Baker: She was self-effacing and very quiet. Historically, that was
what you would have expected a woman of that time to be like. She put herself second
to her husband and went about her life quite quietly.
[00:06:48] Todd Kavanaugh: I imagine to support the owner of a business, she had to
be pretty strong, too.
[00:06:55] Frank Baker: Oh, yes.
[00:06:56] Prentiss Baker: There are different roles as the ages and generations roll by,
but Dad was their only child. She stayed at home, and she was raised with nothing as
well. They lived simple lives.
[00:07:15] Todd Kavanaugh: We’ll change gears a little bit. Frank, I think you’ve told me
stories about this. I’ve been here twenty-three years, so I’ve heard it. This might have
been a story from thirteen years ago about what your summers were like starting at the
roofing company. I’m not sure if it was Baker Rawls at the time. There was obviously no
air conditioning, and you were toting slate up and down the stairs. I feel like I remember

you telling a story about some guys playing cards outside while you were going up and
down the steps. Tell us a little bit about what those early years were like working in the
summer at the company. Bring us back because it looks a little different now in some
regards.
[00:07:54] Frank Baker: I think when Prentiss and I started, we first began working on
weekends. Basically, we were slave labor because the layout at our original facility was
very cumbersome ; the sheet metal shop was upstairs, but the material was delivered
downstairs. You had to carry the sheets of metal up thirty-two stairs to where the
metalworking equipment was. Of course, nobody wanted to do that job; it was a
friendless job. On Saturdays, Dad would have us come down, and that’s how we started
our work life. We were hoofing stuff up and down the stairs. Eventually, we got old
enough to legally work for a roofing company, so we actually got paid.
[00:08:50] Todd Kavanaugh: So you didn’t get paid in the beginning?
[00:08:52] Frank Baker: Oh, no.
[00:08:56] Prentiss Baker: We got paid in trade. Granddad would go by a place that is
closed now downtown to get us paid.
[00:09:03] Frank Baker: We never had a check with our name on it.
[00:09:07] Prentiss Baker: Now, my experience was a little bit different. I remember
bringing metal up the steps, but I also remember pushing a broom a lot. The old sheet
metal shop was upstairs in a hundred-year-old wood-frame building. It was exactly
what you would picture: old wood floors and a big furnace heater in the middle of the
room. It was a big room, probably seventy-five by a hundred or a hundred and
twenty-five feet long. You’ve probably seen pictures of that little old shop.
We had three sheet metal tables, very similar to our new shop, where you would place
your metal. If you were custom making something, you did the work right there. If you
were forming metal, you would mark it and then put it in the brake. It was always a
two-man job, with one person on each side of the brake.
There were some hard lessons. I remember one of my first real jobs when I was getting
paid: I was Jake’s helper. Jake was the shop foreman, which was a big title. Jake worked
by himself a lot of the time and was very efficient, so I think they were just trying to
find me something to do. I’m sure Granddad told him to find something for Prentiss to
do and let me try to learn. I had some funny experiences doing that, and I’ll never forget
this one. He was trying to put a piece of heavy metal together using old-fashioned

rivets that you had to pound to close them up tight and secure. He had a good idea: he
was going to hold the metal with the rivet in place, and I had to hammer the rivet. Well,
guess what? I missed the rivet and hit his hand, and it was not a pretty sight. I got
better after that, but he didn’t let me do that task any longer.
[00:11:24] Matt Elban: Frank, you said something a second ago that had me thinking.
You said “thirty-two steps,” meaning you actually remember the exact number.
[00:11:31] Todd Kavanaugh: Yeah, it’s funny that you remember that.
[00:11:32] Frank Baker: Well, I mean…
[00:11:33] Matt Elban: I would have been counting those in my head. It would have
been one, two, until I was done every time, I’m sure.
[00:11:37] Prentiss Baker: It was straight up. It was a lot of steps, and ceilings were
high back then. The ceiling was probably twenty or twenty-five feet, and the first floor
was the same way. You had to go up the steps, and carrying that metal up was quite a
job. It helped us become men.
[00:11:56] Matt Elban: I guess my next question is, when did you guys decide to move
the sheet metal shop downstairs?
[00:12:00] Frank Baker: When we moved to Berkeley Street. We’re not doing that one
together! You have to understand, I remember the thirty-two steps because there’s a
fair amount of OCD in our family. You would go up those stairs and count one through
thirty-two over and over again, so fifty-five or sixty years later, I still remember that.
The story I think you were referring to, Todd, was from when I finally had a job in the
summer and they would send me out to work. I was never talented enough to actually
put material in place, so all I did was tote. I took stuff and, we didn’t have all these
mechanical lifts at that time like you have now, I put it on my shoulder and carried it up
a ladder. I brought it to the people who were talented enough to actually install slate,
shingles, or whatever type of roof we were working on.
[00:12:57] Matt Elban: You were the mechanical lift.
[00:12:58] Frank Baker: One summer, we were putting the roof on a new dormitory at
Saint Mary’s College. I was doing my duty loading slate up and taking it up the ladder.
We took it to the two mechanics we had who were actually talented enough to put the
material in place. I did this for hours every day; it was all I did.

At one point, I took material up the ladder, went back over the ladder to go down and
get more, and I fell off the roof. Luckily, because it was a three-story building, I fell into
a pile of masonry sand that had just been delivered rather than hitting the hard ground.
I was so embarrassed that this had happened. I was so young that it didn’t really
physically hurt me at that particular second. I got back on the ladder and climbed back
up as quickly as I could to try and make it seem like it hadn’t happened. They were all
sitting there laughing as I came up the ladder. I never did get good enough to put all
that material in place. I was always just sort of a tote.
[00:14:11] Todd Kavanaugh: Prentiss, there’s actually a story in the book about you and
Dorothea Dix, and I’m not sure if you know where I’m going with this one. Tell us a little
bit about that story.
[00:14:22] Prentiss Baker: Dorothea Dix was a mental hospital for the state of North
Carolina for many years, and a lot of those buildings are still standing. Some have been
torn down. They had different levels of mental health issues, so the building you went
to depended on your level. They had a section for the criminally insane. It didn’t have
that name on the building, but we knew what it was. There was a lot of security
because these guys had committed crimes, usually murder, I’m not exaggerating that.
Anyway, we got a work order from Dorothea Dix. Dorothea Dix and our old Davie Street
location were only about a mile apart downtown. Raleigh was very small back then; in
fact, it was somewhat country between Davie Street and Dorothea Dix. We got this call,
and at the time, we did blowpipe and heater work, which is what they needed. I had a
Baker uniform on, a brown and tan work uniform, and I was dressed just like Jake was.
They let us in, but you had to get clearance first. Once inside, we had to walk maybe a
couple hundred feet down the hallways to the job site. The patients were acting erratic;
some of them were leaning against the wall in the hallways, walking around, or sitting
and lying down against the wall. I remember it just like it was yesterday: one of them
said, “We got a new one coming”. I kept walking and didn’t say a word.
[00:16:03] Frank Baker: It’s like Silence of the Lambs.
[00:16:06] Todd Kavanaugh: So, for clarity’s sake, they thought Prentiss was joining
them.
[00:16:13] Prentiss Baker: I was. Yeah.
[00:16:15] Todd Kavanaugh: Clearly, you did, but you’re back here with us and they
didn’t hold on to you.

[00:16:17] Frank Baker: He escaped.
[00:16:20] Prentiss Baker: I have to tell you, just to add real quick, a thirty-second
story. We got another call one summer day from Meredith College because they had
bought a new organ for the music department. Jake made the duct to hook up the
organ to the airflow, and our job was to install it. The ductwork had to be completely
airtight. Let’s put it this way: Jake was not a perfectionist, and I sure wasn’t. We got it
somewhat airproof, but it took us two or three days.
[00:17:03] Todd Kavanaugh: So was it one of those things where they hit the organ
and it would be whistling?
[00:17:06] Frank Baker: Exactly.
[00:17:07] Prentiss Baker: The right sound did not come out of that organ.
[00:17:10] Frank Baker: So yeah.
[00:17:11] Todd Kavanaugh: I guess eventually you just had to get out of the ductwork
business.
[00:17:14] Prentiss Baker: Yes.
[00:17:15] Todd Kavanaugh: Speaking of old work, I’m curious. I know some of the lore
around Baker is about moonshine stills. I think the statute of limitations has run out at
this point, so we can talk about it. I would love to hear a little history about moonshine
stills and Baker Roofing Company.
[00:17:35] Frank Baker: Well, we did specialty copper work. I was working full time at
the company, so it must have been around 1969 or 1970. We were working on a
Saturday. We always worked on Saturdays; we worked every day except Sunday. I was
at the back counter doing some minor task that anybody could have done, and this guy
walked in the back door smoking a cigar, wearing a hat and a tie. I thought that was a
little odd for a Saturday in the summer.
He came in with a drawing and said, “I need you to make this for me by Monday
morning, and I’ll pay cash for whatever you feel you need to charge me to do this work”.
It was this round thing made out of copper with some pipes coming out of it, and I
didn’t have any idea what it was. I took the drawing back to Jake. Jake looked at it,
started laughing, and asked, “You don’t know what this is, do you?” I said no, and he told
me it was a moonshine still.

He said that guy was a moonshiner and he would come back on Monday morning with
a large stack of bills. Whatever we wanted to charge him, he would pay just to get his
operation up and running. That is exactly what happened. Jake made the piece that
Saturday, came in on Sunday to finish it up, and the guy came back in on Monday, still
wearing the tie and hat and smoking the cigar. He walked in and asked what he needed
to pay us. I can’t remember what I told him, but it was something outlandish, of course.
He just started unrolling bills, put them on the counter, and asked if he could take it
away. I said, “Yes, sir,” and out he went.
[00:19:24] Prentiss Baker: I always wanted to know if that was Percy Flowers or
Percy’s brother. He was a famous bootlegger from Johnston County. A book just came
out about him. If you haven’t read it, it’s not a great book, but it tells the life story of
Percy, his brother, and the family. They started the Flowers development down on
Highway 42. They turned it into a 3,000-acre development.
[00:19:52] Frank Baker: Yeah, it’s questionable.
[00:19:56] Matt Elban: We’ve talked about some of the work you guys did growing up,
toting slate and all of that, but I’ve always been curious: What was the dumbest thing
you two ever argued about at work?
[00:20:06] Prentiss Baker: I cannot answer what the dumbest thing we argued about
was. We definitely did argue, though. We did not see eye-to-eye a lot of the time. Since
I was the oldest, I kind of assumed that I needed to be the boss. Let’s put it this way:
We show our love to each other a whole lot better now than we did back then. Frank,
why don’t you answer the question? What’s the dumbest thing?
[00:20:45] Todd Kavanaugh: You know what, it doesn’t have to be dumb for the
record. It could just be one of those things you remember and think, “Oh, yeah. We did
not see eye-to-eye for a while on this thing”.
[00:20:54] Frank Baker: We disagreed about so many things; it’s hard to say.
Specifically, one argument was always more outlandish than the next, and we did argue
quite a bit. I never quite took to the idea that just because I was younger, I should be
subservient. We tended to clash quite often.
[00:21:12] Prentiss Baker: Wasn’t that your problem?
[00:21:16] Frank Baker: We were quite vocal about it. I remember this apexed during
the first three or four years we worked together. That was when our disagreements
really came to the fore.

[00:21:31] Todd Kavanaugh: Did it ever turn into a thing where other employees were
like, “Uh-oh, the Baker brothers are going at it,” and everybody just kind of gave you
space and walked away?
[00:21:40] Prentiss Baker: I’m not sure we were cognizant of what was going on.
[00:21:42] Frank Baker: I think that happened more than once, yes.
[00:21:47] Todd Kavanaugh: There was a point where you two took over fairly early for
your dad, so there wasn’t really a ringleader. You all just had to kind of figure it out.
[00:21:54] Prentiss Baker: It happened. Dad had a second heart attack, so he was out
of work for a long time. When he came back, he didn’t want to be the boss anymore,
which was great for us. Quite frankly, he gave us that opportunity. He set up his
estimating office downstairs in one of those old rooms where we had put in sheetrock.
Dad didn’t come into the office every day, but when he did show up, he worked from
that office down there.
We had a wonderful opportunity to take the reins and run. Sometimes we would
stumble, then we’d run a little bit, then walk and stumble again, but it was a great
experience. I wouldn’t trade a single day of my life, quite frankly; through all the tough
things and all the wonderful things, we’ve had so many blessings.
[00:22:52] Matt Elban: Alright, well, we are going to pause right here. I’ll be honest: We
had not originally planned on splitting this into two parts, but this conversation with
Prentiss and Frank has been way too good to cut down. There is too much in here
worth hearing, so rather than edit out the good stuff, we’re going to let it breathe and
release Part 2 in a few days.
Make sure you’re following the podcast so you don’t miss it. Whether you’ve been a
part of the Baker story yourself or you just love hearing the personal stories behind how
one of the most successful roofing contractors in the nation was built, Part 2 is going
to be worth the wait. We look forward to seeing you back here very soon.
[00:23:32] Todd Kavanaugh: That wraps up this episode of Under the Roof. Thanks for
joining us and being a part of the Baker Roofing family.
[00:23:39] Matt Elban: If you liked what you heard, share it with your crew. Hit the
follow button and keep the conversation going wherever you work.
[00:23:46] Todd Kavanaugh: We’re here to keep you informed, inspired, and included,
because the more connected we are, the better we work together.

[00:23:54] Matt Elban: And, as always, we’ll leave you with this: We shall do good
work, at a profit if we can, at a loss if we must, but always good work. See you next
time.