Our History

My career path was inevitable. I was born in Wichita, Kansas, to Perry Baker and Roberta Cata. My father was attending Wichita State University on a football scholarship. He and my mother married during college and I was born during his senior year.

 

After my father graduated from college, we moved to Northeast Oklahoma, where I spent my childhood. My paternal grandfather, Grandpa Dover, was a developer and builder. My maternal grandfather, Grandpa Cata, was a talented cabinet maker. My father was an educator and was also a very skilled remodeler and even spent time building a handful of new homes. I worked alongside my father and grandfathers and participated in the building process from the breaking of ground to the “turning of the key” completion of the home. The experience afforded me a vast knowledge of the process of constructing a home, from beginning to end, and laid a solid foundation to further prepare and propel me into my career. 

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After I graduated from high school, I attended Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology in Okmulgee, Oklahoma. I pursued studies in Construction Industries.

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Upon completion of my education in Okmulgee, I returned to the Fairland, Oklahoma area where I started a family and continued my career in the construction field. It was during this time that I began to work on projects that focused on modernizing low-income Native People's homes. Our focus was to alter these homes into not only more energy-efficient residences, but also into handicapped-accessible, known in the industry as “Aging-in-Place”. I thoroughly enjoyed assisting this population in renovating their homes into safer and easier to maintain environments in which to raise their families.

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Later in my career, I was hired as the Director of Modernization and Construction for the Housing Authority of the Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma. This was an enjoyable and meaningful time in my career journey; not only were we managing and remodeling low-rent housing projects in Fairland, Miami, and in several neighboring communities, but we were also building new homes within those communities as well. We were supporting those in our area with housing needs. 

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In 1991, I was honored to serve a one-year term as the Second Chief for our tribe, The Seneca-Cayuga Tribe of Oklahoma.

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In 1993, my wife, Lea Ann, and I relocated to Bethany, Oklahoma and we established our company, J & L Construction, LLC. In 1993, in order to place more emphasis on our love of remodeling and that component of our business, we changed the company's name to J & L Construction and Remodeling, LLC. In 2005, we relocated to Edmond, Oklahoma where we currently enjoy life with our three daughters, one son-in-law and eight grandchildren.

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Thank you for reading about our history and for your interest in our company. If you choose J&L, I assure you, you will be thrilled with the your vision becoming reality. 

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--John R. Baker