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.

Newark -- Laugh or Cry?

In this morning’s N&O was a column by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, talking about late-night host Conan O”Brien’s mock-feud with Newark (NJ) mayor Cory Booker. O’Brien talks about Newark’s health-care program, which, he says, consists of a bus ticket out of Newark. Jokes like that.

Comedians always need something -- some place -- to joke about. Philadelphia used to be the butt of the jokes. Did you hear about the contest where the second prize was a trip to Philadelphia? And the first prize was you didn’t have to go.

I’m always interested to read about Newark. I was born there, and I spent my childhood in Belleville, an adjacent town, where we were just a half-hour bus-ride from downtown Newark. My pals and I used to ride the bus to Newark to go to Saturday-morning programs at the Newark Public Library and sometimes to a movie, with occasional side-trips to places like Bamberger’s Department Store (where we once -- unbeknownst to our parents -- got into trouble trying to run up the down-escalator). Newark in those days was safe enough that our parents had no worry in letting us go downtown unaccompanied.

As I’ve delved, more resently, into family history and genealogy, I’ve discovered that some of my ancestors were among the founders and first settlers of Newark. When I was growing up, the best-known hotel in Newark was the Robert Treat Hotel, which I now know was named for the early Connecticut governor who led the first expedition to Newark (though he stayed in Newark only long enough to get it established, and then returned home to Connecticut six years later). Newark (like other Newarks in Delaware and Ohio) was named -- depending on which account you want to believe -- either as the “New Ark” or the “New Work.” In any case, it was a Puritan religious settlement, intended (like so many early New England settlements) to return to the purity and virtue which the founders thought were being lost in the older settlements they came from.

But all that’s a long time ago, and Newark has undergone several cultural transformations since.

And what has happened to inner cities isn’t a laughing matter. Herbert goes on to express the hope that all the joking will result in some serious focus on the real problems of Newark and other cities -- he talks about Camden and Chicago, and we know the same problems confront other cities as well. Problems of poverty, unemployment, poor schools, high drop-out rates, high crime rates, and high incarceration rates.

He juxtaposes two ironically similar numbers: the proposed 40,000 increase in the troops sent to Afghanistan, and the 40,000 teachers laid off in the past year -- what does that say about our priorities? If we can afford to fight multi-billion dollar wars abroad and not worry about the cost, then cost should be a minor consideration when we contemplate the wrong we do to our most needy citizens and the damage we do to the country by ignoring these desperate needs.