I always loved the crystal cross in my east window. The rainbows produced by the cross always reminded me of the promises of my Creator. Those already fulfilled, those present in the day and those for the future. I found those promises to be evidence of the existence of my Creator. Unless I tell you, my death will probably be listed as something other than what it really is, the results of metastatic breast cancer. It will be listed as a byproduct with no mention of the years cancer fought to live with me. It was a test and a journey of faith. I will be one more unregistered statistic with metastatic breast cancer who does not become a part of the research base (sad). The last set of blogs tells of what I am certain that if people had known all the years that I had breast cancer my relationships with them would have been different. At 98 plus, I can only tell you that I have had an incredible blessed life. The promises from that east window have been more than fulfilled.
I was born June 13, 1921 on my grandfather's farm in New Albin, Iowa. I was the middle sibling with an older sister Esther and a younger brother DeVillo. I lived there for four years, started school there, and learned to satisfy my curiosity by spending time in this mammoth family home of my grandfather. I am of German heritage and my grandfather was a strict German. He was a frugal and compassionate man. During my lifetime, we moved fairly frequently to different levels of housing. I was always gifted with the presence of many relatives of my mother's family. My mother was from a family of ten.
I attended small, one-room country schools. It was in those multi-grade country schools that I learned to become a very independent learner. No one there prevented me from working outside of "my grade". I would follow whatever I chose at whatever level it was and no one told me, "it wasn't my grade," "it was too hard for me" or "to go do my work." I was an active learner in what was truly, for me, an ungraded school. I finished the grade in a "towns school" in Lansing, Iowa. I have always loved school. I found school to be a place where I could travel in my mind. I found the farm to be a place to love nature and animals, God's creations. I finished high school in Lansing, Iowa where I played softball and basketball. With hard work, I discovered how to use my intellectual and physical talent bestowed upon me by my Creator. I finished Iowa State Teacher's College in 1942(now called University of Northern Iowa). I graduated with two majors in Business Education and Physical education and two minors in English and Biological Science. Somehow, by working as many as three jobs, I managed to finish and even before graduation I had my first job teaching in Aberdeen, South Dakota.
Pearl Harbor occurred when I was still in college, so when I went to my first year of teaching, we were fighting furiously in the Pacific. While I was in my first year of teaching, I joined the Navy thinking I could finish out the year and then go. As it turned out, I was called before the end of the year and entered the Navy in 1943. I served at NATTC Navy Base near Memphis, Tennessee as a Naval Officer. There I met and married a Navy pilot, R. Frank Tucker. He was deployed to Okinawa as part of a unit to invade Japan shortly after we were married. While Frank was overseas, my first son, Bob Tucker, was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. When Frank came home in 1945 we journeyed to the west coast by train with a compartment full of diapers and baby paraphernalia. We lived with Frank's family for a few months in Everett, Washington. We bought a small house with a VA loan across the street from his family. Frank became an assistant in the Chamber of Commerce; this became the beginning of a career in Chamber of Commerce work. In short time he was hired as the manager of the Chamber of Commerce in Chehalis, Washington, where we lived for three years. My second son, Britt Tucker, was born in Seattle at Virginia Mason Hospital while we lived in Chehalis. I started work in the Chehalis Public School system as a health coordinator working with a man named J. Wesley Crumb, a marvelous administrator.

We moved from Chehalis when Frank got a job as Chamber of Commerce manager in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Britt was a baby and Bob was in kindergarten. I started teaching almost immediately in Klamath County School outside of Klamath Falls. The second year I got a job at the high school where I worked for ten years in successive positions as a physical education teacher, counselor and the dean of girls. In the middle of the year, Frank got a job with the United States Chamber of Commerce as a district manager for California. The boys and I joined him mid-year in 1961 in Santa Monica, California. We lived here for six months and then moved to Palos Verdes when I was hired as a counselor to help open a new Palos Verdes High School. During that first year, I started pursuing a doctoral degree at UCLA, which I finished in 1964.
During my last year at UCLA, I was hired as Dean of Women at the University of California, Riverside. I was at UC Riverside for three years as Dean of Women and Director of Upward Bound, a program to help disadvantaged youth succeed in high school and become ready for college. It was at UCR that I experienced many incredible, blatant discrimination events. I found the young women were openly not getting fellowships, scholarships and opportunities that were similar to the young men. I spent a great deal of time speaking and working to try to create equal opportunity for these bright young women. It was there that I started to write about the issues and lobby in any way that I could to change the university system to have the equal opportunity that it professed to have. I found myself very busy trying to answer all of the requests that I had to speak and work with groups on gender and sex stereotyping issues.
In 1970, I ran for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I was teaching at various places including Claremont Grad School, UCR extension, etc. After living in Riverside, we moved back to Palos Verdes. I was then hired as an associate professor in the education department at Cal Western University in San Diego. We retained our residence in Palos Verdes and I spent the first part of the week in San Diego living with my sons who were both going to Cal Western. While at Cal Western, I received a telegram from the Dean at University of Cincinnati in Ohio to come to Cincinnati to be their Dean of Graduate Studies in the College of Education. I interviewed and received the position as Professor of Education and Dean of Graduate Studies. In 1972, we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio (Frank had retired). Bob and Britt joined us in Cincinnati where they received their master's degrees from the University of Cincinnati. Britt started teaching in Cincinnati and later moved to Portland, Oregon where he was married. Bob move back to San Diego. One of the great honors that I have received occurred to me in Cincinnati. I was rewarded a student scholarship in my name with a plaque. The scholarship was named the Sylvia Boltz Tucker award. On the plaque it says excellence, energy and humanity. These were the three traits I was known for.
I was then hired in Summer of 1975 to become Dean of Education at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only female Dean in a major university in the United States. This gives you a good indication of the status of women during this time. The occasions given to me to try to create environments of equal opportunity for both men and women were constant. While in Corvallis, I bought land in 1976 in Bonsall, California that became known as "the farm". Bob moved onto the farm in 1978 and spent the following years managing and developing the farm. I retired from Oregon State as Dean and Professor Emeritus of Education in 1982, but continued to work part-time one-quarter a year as a Professor of Education until 1984.
In 1982, I moved to Bonsall on the farm. I was hired at National University in 1986 as Chair of Instructional Leadership and Professor of Education. I taught graduate classes full time and served as faculty representative to the Board of Trustees. I remained here for 13 wonderful years and retired in 1999. I was elected to serve on a local school board in 1996 and served for 23 years until 2018. During this time, Britt and his wife Diane had moved from Portland to a neighboring house in Bonsall. They had my first two grandchildren, Colin, and Kera. They stayed in Bonsall for 13 years and then returned to Portland (where the remain today). Bob remained in Bonsall (and currently is today) and married his wife Kimberly. Subsequently, they added two beautiful grandchildren, Hailey and Cassidy, to our family.
It is obvious as you read this that I have been blessed beyond words by my Creator to service and to live my vision every day. When I get up my question to myself is "How do I make a difference to someone, somewhere, some place, somehow every day?" My Creator has given me ample opportunities to live that vision rain or shine. My rainbows dancing on my ceiling always remind me of the gifts given to me by my Creator and the opportunities to open the gifts to serve. Opening the gifts has allowed me to grow in faith and live with the fruit of the spirit my Creator has given me. It has allowed me to know that even when the rainbows aren't visible, the promises are still there.
To see my blogs, go to grandmatucker.com

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