Donald R. Baldwin, 96, of Speedway, died Tuesday, July 14, 2026, peacefully at home. Born December 20, 1929, in Spanishburg, he was the son of the late Harvey C. Baldwin and Nancy Jane Lusk Baldwin. His formal education started in a one-room school in what was then call the primer in Grayson County Virginia, at White Top, the second highest mountain in Virginia. The following year he started his West Virginia education in the First grade at Spanishburg. There his education continued into the seventh grade when he transferred to Athens where he graduated in 1948. At that time and for three years the high school was known as Concord Training School. Following graduation, he started business courses at West Virginia Business College but should have dropped out knowing full well that handling other people’s money was not for him. Then followed the Army Corp of Engineering short course in Civil engineering which training he used to help build the Distant Early Warning Radar line which extended from Alaska to Greenland. Next was two & a half years at Concord College and a B.S. degree in secondary education and teaching social studies and English at Matoaka High School for three years during which time he earned his master’s degree in history & government at Ohio University. In 1961, he taught at Athens High School for five years. When he was invited to join the history faculty at Bluefield State College, where he served for thirty-two years as Professor of History and for eight of those years, Chairman of the Social Science Division. In 1969, he taught an extension course in Bluefield for WVU, and in 1970, was named a Distinguished West Virginian by Governor Arch Moore, Jr. In 1980, he received the Advanced Graduate Studies degree from Virginia Tech and in 1982, resigned his division chairmanship in order to devote full time to his first love, teaching. He resigned from teaching entirely in December of 1997, just days before his 67th birthday. Thereafter, until 2012, he maintained a herd of beef master angus cows on his Speedway farm, doing most of the work of baling hay and feeding the cattle in the winter. Neither rain, nor snow, sleet nor blizzard kept those cows from being feed! But he finally retired from farming at the age of 82 but continued his counselling of the residents of Mercer County Fellowship Home in Bluefield until he could no longer climb those 37 steps. He lived a long and fruitful and wonderful life. Thanks to all for making it so. In addition to tis parents, he was preceded by his loving and devoted wife, Dolly Serreno Baldwin, and all of his siblings, Juanita, Audrey, Ester, Ruth, Lucille, Shirley, Hobert, Clyde, Virgil & Billy. Survivors include his son and his wife, John & Sonya Baldwin, Evan Baldwin, two grandsons, Anthony “Tony” Baldwin & companion, Elizabth O’Donell, Scott Thompson & companion Courtney Hicks, one great granddaughter, Brynlle Thompson. Along with a host of nieces and nephews. Services to celebrate the life of Donald Baldwin will be held 11:00 A.M. Wednesday, July 22, 2026, in the Chaple of the Memorial Funeral Directory on the Athens Road in Princeton with Pastor Randy Sargrant, along with Bobby Davis & Tom Flanigan. Burial will follow in Roselawn Memorial Gardens in Princeton. Friends may visit with the family on Wednesday from 10:00 A.M. until the service hour. Online condolences may be shared with the family via www.memorialfd.com