There was a time when Shirley Baker thought of building a larger house and moving her family from the south Independence home she has lived in with her husband, Bill, for almost 50 years.
But there was one problem.
“This is home,” she said quietly. “We thought about building a bigger place once. But it wouldn’t be home.”
Although many in the Independence community might know Shirley from the more than 20 years she owned and operated the Courthouse Exchange restaurant on the Independence Square, she likes to be known as something else: a wife, mother, grandmother and even great-grandmother. Or as Bill likes to say, a “great, great-grandmother.”
“Isn’t she the most beautiful great, great-grandmother you have ever seen?” he said from across the room as he looked at his wife. “And I don’t mean that as in great-grandmother. I mean ‘great’ as an adjective.”
Growing Up
Shirley Baker grew up in Sugar Creek, roaming the alleys of the small town tucked against western Independence and the Missouri River. Although not Slavic – as are many from Sugar Creek – she proudly says that she can “polka with the best of them.” As a child, Independence was thought of as the “big city.”
“The (Independence) Square is where you went to do anything,” she said. “When World War II ended, that is where we headed for. We wanted to be where the action was.”
Little did Shirley know that it was at the Independence Square that her name would become synonymous with good food, home cooking and a little bit of attitude when it came to appropriate behavior in the Courthouse Exchange.
A stay-at-home mom with her seven children, Shirley said she never imagined doing anything else. Brought up during a time where she thought her only role was to be a good wife and mother, she said she wanted to do those jobs to the best of her ability.
“I was a housewife. That is what I did for my career, and I was happy to do that,” she said. “And I knew that I wanted to have babies, although I never knew I would have seven. But that was what life was all about for me. I think the biggest challenge was trying to give each one equal attention and hope that I didn’t leave anyone out.”
Shirley met Bill at a church function in 1954. On the first date, Bill asked Shirley to marry him. She was 18 and he was 26, a fact that Shirley’s mother did not discover until a wedding announcement appeared in the newspaper.
“She wasn’t happy, but what else could she do at that point?” Shirley said. “I fell in love with him and knew he was the man for me.”
From the start, there was always family around, which continues even today. Each of their seven children – Robin, Cindy, Michael, Monica, Tim, John and Sara now live in the Kansas City area. And as a mother, there was one person she looked up to the most.
“Probably as a mother, she was my greatest mentor,” she said of Bill’s mother. “I mean, she had to have it hard raising eight boys. But she was always the softest, kindest person I knew. She was not a woman of many words, but you knew when she gave you that look, you were in trouble.”
Welcome to politics
Being raised in a political family, Shirley was not surprised when Bill also became politically active as a committeeman and later as an Independence City Council member. He served for two terms before losing a mayoral race to Barbara Potts. Shirley said being a politician’s wife was not always easy.
“It is a very different experience that is sometimes tough to explain,” she said. “When you run a campaign, you cannot be a wimp. But when people would say unkind things, that was when it got kind of hard.”
After serving his time with the Independence City Council, Shirley thought her days of stuffing and licking envelopes were over, which is why when her daughter Cindy Circo announced only a few years ago that she would be running for a spot on the Kansas City Council, she was “blown over.”
“I was surprised,” she said. “But I guess the political bug still runs in our family’s blood, so I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I truly was.”
Courthouse Exchange
Like many things in her life, Shirley was not prepared for the 20-year adventure that was the Courthouse Exchange, a staple on the Independence Square. She said she never thought that after spending so many years as a stay-at-home mother, she would go to work. But at that time then-owner Lu Vaughan asked her to serve as a hostess. At the time, her youngest child was 10 years old. But shortly thereafter, she was running the whole restaurant from creating the menu to greeting customers.
“It was hard work. Lots and lots and lots of hard work,” she said with a laugh. “I don’t miss the work, but I miss the people so much.”
Shirley said when she began working at the Courthouse Exchange she simply “did what she knew” and that was simple, home cooking. Of the menu, 99 percent was made from scratch including all of the soups and salads. Many of the menu items were recipes from her own kitchen or those she grew up having at the dinner table.
“The tomato salad was one of my mother’s and the tenderloin sandwiches were always a hit,” she said. “We also had an open-faced, roast beef sandwich. When I was 14, I worked at Velvet Freeze Ice Cream on the Square. At lunch, I always went to Woolworths to have an open-faced roast beef sandwich. Ours was in honor of that.”
The FBI agent
During the 20 years working at the Courthouse Exchange, Shirley said there were many opportunities to meet celebrities from Willie Nelson to countless politicians. During the first Gulf War, a CNN news crew came to the restaurant to talk about how those in the Midwest felt about the conflict.
But one of the most memorable experiences was when President Ronald Reagan came through Independence during the Santa-Cali-Gon Days Festival, one of the biggest weekends of the year for the Courthouse Exchange. Shirley said an FBI agent informed her they would be shutting down Lexington Avenue east to Main Street in preparation for the president’s arrival. This meant that the restaurant would be closed on Saturday, something that did not please Shirley.
“I told that FBI agent that we would not be closing. The money we made during those three days helped us to survive during January, February and March,” she said. “I told him they could shut the street down starting at the beer garden, which was at that time right next door. That would allow us to leave our door open. Turns out, that is what they did, and we stayed open for business.”
Ending of an era
On Jan. 31, 1999, Shirley retired from the Courthouse Exchange. She said she felt like it was the right time to leave.
“It was tough being a working mom. I had the mindset for the longest time that that was all I was going to be,” she said. “But then at 50, Bill decided to go into politics, and we did that. The restaurant was another thing we did not plan, but my attitude was always that if someone believed I could do this, then I better believe in myself.”
Bill said people still miss Shirley’s presence on the Independence Square.
“We come across people all the time that miss her,” he said. “Everyone loved her cooking and loved spending time in the Courthouse Exchange. Everyone misses her.”
The Square on the rise
But what makes Shirley most happy is to see the revitalization of the place where she has spent so much time as both a child and an adult.
“There was a time when the only two things on the Square were the Courthouse Exchange and the Cinema,” she said. “That was it.”
Shirley said she is “ecstatic” that the old courthouse has been renovated, though with the renovations came the removal of what she calls “her lights.” The lights that she fought long and hard for once outlined the courthouse. However, she said she would not change anything with the new look of the courthouse.
“The Square is an historical site that needed a lot of TLC,” she said. “I don’t honestly believe it was until Ken and Cindy McClain (who have purchased and renovated many Square businesses, including the Courthouse Exchange) came to take this on that things really started happening. They have been doing the things that should have always been done, and I couldn’t be happier. I just could not be happier.”
Happy to be Grandma
Looking back, Shirley says she has had a “great life.” Now at 72, she said she is happy to simply be grandma, spending her days with her husband.
“When you’re a mom, you are always on duty,” she said. “But when you have grandkids, it is a little bit different. It is simply indescribable how you feel when you look at them.”
Every morning, Shirley and Bill spend some time sitting at the table, reading the paper and drinking their morning coffee. She said they don’t dwell on getting older, but instead focus on what is positive in their lives – their family, friends and having each other.
“I have always tried to deal with life as it comes to me in the most positive manner possible,” she said. “We are still healthy and full of life. Neither of us are in the hospital or rest home, and we still have fun with our family and friends. We are just happy to be retired and having a good life.”
