Peter B. Baird, the son of Cora and Bil Baird, became the director of Baird Marionettes as his father’s health declined. A consummate puppeteer himself, Peter died of esophageal cancer in 2004 at the age of fifty-two. The MacNider Museum in Mason City, Iowa, has established a memorial endowment fund for conservation of its collection of the Baird puppets.