Sarah Tucker, a Remarkable Woman -- In Memoriam

Kay and I drove on Thursday from our home in Durham to a funeral in Charlotte, the funeral of an amazing woman I had known for forty-five years (though I didn't realize fully how amazing she was until I heard the testimonials at the funeral).

Here's how I got to know Sarah Tucker:

In the mid-sixties I spent four years as the program director for an ambitious project in a low-income school in Charlotte. The mandate of the program was to select the most promising seventh-graders in six successive classes, work with them in a variety of ways, and prepare them for college. (I've written in more detail about this elsewhere.)

Carlene was one of that first group, and I soon got to know her mother, Sarah. I learned that Sarah was young (just six years older than I) and had been widowed for several years. She had seven small children and no job skills, not even a high school diploma. She was working as a domestic. Realizing that she could not earn enough to provide adequately for her children, she completed her GED and took a secretarial course, which prepared her for a higher-paying job. Then, a couple of years later, having somehow discovered what she really wanted to do, she went back to school again for nursing training, and got into the field she worked in for the rest of her working career. And of course she had to get all this schooling evenings and whenever she wasn't out earning a living.

This was potentially a recipe for disaster for her children -- seven kids at home, no adult supervision, all kinds of attractive trouble outside the home.
But it didn't happen. In a community where half the kids dropped out of school and many got in trouble with the law, every one of her children graduated. Why? She was both loving and firm. She let her kids know that she loved them and had confidence in their worth and their ability. And she laid down the law: "You will go to school every day. You will do your best in school. And you will graduate from high school." I'm not sure if she ever spelled out what she would do if any of the kids broke any of these rules, but I'm sure none of them ever wanted to find out.

So all seven graduated. Most went to college. Two became ministers. One completed a doctorate and became a clinical psychologist. And in later years -- as I learned at the funeral -- when several grandchildren were in danger of getting themselves into serious trouble and ruining their futures, they at various times came to stay with Grandma for a number of months. And they responded to her mix of praise ande support and confidence-boosting, and they turned their lives around -- as they emphatically and emotionally told the two hundred mourners at the funeral.