“I took 32 guitars, boxes of harmonicas, boxes of tambourines, a couple amps …,” she said that evening from her home in Alexandria, Minn.

Barb and her husband, Steve, are founders of Operation Happy Note, which has shipped more than 2,100 instruments—guitars, mandolins, banjos, violins and harmonicas—to American troops deployed overseas.

It started with one guitar sent to her son, Marte, who had been deployed to Iraq in his 18th year with the National Guard. Barb and Steve Baker had puzzled over what to send him for his birthday. A guitar wouldn’t have occurred to Barb; Marte had played the drums a bit when he was a high school kid in Brandon, but he hadn’t done much of anything with music since then.

It occurred to Steve Baker, Marte’s stepfather, though. Steve Baker started playing guitar when he was 11 years old, growing up in Grand Rapids, Minn.

Steve suggested the idea, and they ran it past Marte. He thought it seemed good. Steve chose a guitar from his personal collection; they shipped it off to Iraq along with a set of lesson programs Steve had already created. A few days later they had a phone call from their son. He had a buddy who thought the guitar was pretty cool and was wondering if they could send another.

Sure. They sent a second guitar. Not as special as the one for Marte, but a good guitar.

A few days later they had a phone call from Marte. Another buddy was interested and would pay for a guitar.

Okay. They gave him a sweet deal on the price, though, and shipped off the third guitar.

“Then Steve said, ‘Maybe we should have a fundraiser so we can send more guitars over,’” Barb Baker said, laughing at the recollection. It wasn’t what she was expecting to hear from Steve, who would rather repair instruments and play music than be talking to people. (“She’s better with words,” Steve Baker said when he was contacted for this article.)

But about that time, she says, a friend came into their store—The Music Store at 122 E. Lincoln in Fergus Falls. They started talking about the idea of a fundraiser, tossing out ideas for names. They landed on Operation Happy Note.

In 2005, the group sent 150 guitars to American soldiers stationed overseas. In 2006, they sent 276.

“We thought that was really good,” Barb Baker said, laughing.

In 2007, they sent 1,069 instruments in response to requests from soldiers or from soldiers’ family members. Their Web site is a repertory of stories from soldiers who have gained new musical skills in their time away from home and country.

Barb Baker had been working at a part-time job when Operation Happy Note was beginning. As the requests were coming in and the donated musical instruments were going out, she looked at Steve and said, “Some day, this is going to be my job.”

Barb Baker laughs again.

“I tell people, ‘Be careful what you pray for. You just might get it!’”

Operation Happy Note is now a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. That’s a story by itself. The year they were approved for nonprofit status, Barb sent in the paperwork the last week in October. They were told the approval process would take anywhere from six to 18 months.

They were notified of their nonprofit status the first week of December, hardly more than a month after application.

“If that is not the hand of God, I don’t know what is,” Barb Baker said, and you can feel her grin bouncing off the satellite that is carrying the phone conversation.

She has story after story after story of things working out in ways that defy explanation. “One day,” she says, “we got an e-mail from a soldier who said, ‘If you ever get a mountain dulcimer, I would love one.’ I said to Steve, ‘I don’t even know what a mountain dulcimer looks like!’ But don’t you know, in a week we got an e-mail from someone down South: ‘I have a beautiful mountain dulcimer…’”

Barb Baker thoroughly enjoys these stories. “How can you not believe?!” she said. Although it would be all right with the Bakers if the reason for the stories—soldiers serving in a war—would cease to exist.

“I’m not pro-war,” Barb Baker said. “But we’ve had war since the beginning of time. I don’t suppose I can change that. I can support the soldiers.”

“I’m not sure why the Good Lord picked us for this,” she says, “but until he tells me different, I’m going to keep on.”

It has become a full-time job. It keeps her so busy, at an age when people are allowed, if not encouraged, to “slow down” that someone recently asked her, “What are you going to do when the troops come home?”

“I looked him right in the eye and I said, ‘I’m going to say “Praise the Lord!”’”


ACTION POINT:
To learn more about Operation Happy Note, visit www.operationhappynote.com or call (218) 736-5541.