In World War I, he served as captain of Battery F, Three Hundred and Thirty-eighth Field Artillery for the United States. In 1921, he graduated from University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Law and was admitted to the bar, setting up practice in Omaha.
Marriage and family
On November 30, 1921, he was married to Regina Katherine Connell[1] at Omaha. She was born at Omaha, Douglas County, Nebraska on September 23, 1896, the daughter of Dr. Ralph Wardlaw Connell[4] and Katherine E Walsh. She was a 1921 graduate of Wellesley College. Her uncle, William James Connell, was a Nebraska Republican politician and served as a member of the United States House of Representatives for Nebraska's 1st congressional district. Her first cousin, Dr. Karl Albert Connell, invented the gas mask used by American troops during World War I.
They were the parents of three children, Howard Malcolm Baldrige, Jr., born October 4, 1922; Robert Connell Baldrige,[5] born November 9, 1924, and Letitia Baldrige, born February 9, 1926.
^She was the closest thing Omaha had to a dowager duchess, I suppose-even if she did scandalize Omaha society by leaving her husband and young son for a two-year fling in an apartment in Paris on the avenue Foch in the early 1900s. The rumor was that she had a French lover, and my cousin Keating Coffey heard from his parents that Omaha people talked a lot about it, just as they did about the cigarettes she came home puffing. Ladies did not smoke in those days in the Midwest, only non-ladies did. Baldrige, Letitia. "My Life in the Kennedy White House". Archived from the original on January 16, 2009. Retrieved August 10, 2009.
Cleave, Egbert. Cleave's biographical cyclopaedia of homoeopathic physicians and surgeons. Philadelphia: Galaxy publishing company, 1873.
King, William Harvey. History of homoeopathy and its institutions in America; their founders, benefactors, faculties, officers, hospitals, alumni, etc., with a record of achievement of its representatives in the world of medicine. New York, Chicago, The Lewis publishing company, 1905.
Welch, M.J. Douglas County Who's Who in Nebraska, 1940 Published by; Nebraska Press Association - Lincoln, 1940