Ruth Tucker, 86, headmistress at Nashoba school in Concord
Ruth Tucker's eyesight was nearly gone, and her once-worldwide journeys had been truncated to trips in her Milton house with the assistance of a walker. Her intellect, however, was still taking flight.
"She was sharp right up until the end," said her niece Joan Tucker Handelmann of Anacortes, Wash. "She was almost blind and was having trouble getting around, but I tell you, that mind. I found something by her bedside just a few days before she died. She was memorizing, again, the chronology of the kings and queens of England."
A love of learning defined Miss Tucker's life, from Milton Academy to Vassar College to Nashoba Country Day School in Concord, which she helped launch in 1959. Miss Tucker, the first headmistress at Nashoba, died of heart failure April 9 in her Milton house. She was 86.
"In the simpler, pre-multicultural, pre-politically correct world of Concord in the 1950s, Ruth believed in an old-fashioned and Eurocentric education, one which would give the local girls who were her pupils an understanding of their own Eurocentric background," said Marian Korbet of Maynard, whom Miss Tucker hired to teach sixth grade at Nashoba. "She laid out a curriculum in which Latin was essential, as was an introduction to European history."
"She was fond of saying, 'Education serves no purpose unless its possessor is reasonably balanced in mind and soul, and therefore equipped to meet adversity and challenge,' " said Kay Cowan, the current head of school for what is now Nashoba Brooks School.
Born in Brockton, Miss Tucker graduated from Milton Academy in 1937 and from Vassar in 1941. She went to Katharine Gibbs School to learn office skills, then returned to Milton Academy, working in administration and as a second-grade teacher.
The opportunity to lead a new school for fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade girls in Concord was a leap of faith, Cowan said.
"She didn't even know how much she was going to be paid," Cowan said. "Think about it: Would you take a job when you didn't know how much you were going to be paid and when you were getting your first paycheck? I wouldn't."
She laughed and added: "What if she had said no? This woman changed the history of independent school education in Concord."
A firm administrator, Miss Tucker sought faculty who shared her belief in building a girls' school, which grew to include grades 7 and 8.
"Ruth had a talent for hiring imaginative, creative people who really wanted to teach and were allowed to do it their way," said Sue Morse of Boxborough, whom Miss Tucker hired to teach art and who became assistant head of school.
"Ruth believed in fresh air and sensible shoes, and she saw to it that every girl was given an apple every day at recess," Korbet said. "On the last day of school, with her untiring attention to detail and commitment to personal attention, Ruth read every student's report card with her before sending her off for summer vacation full of inspiration for the following year, happy and with a big sigh of relief."
Accompanying Miss Tucker to school many days was her golden retriever, Sherry, so named because the reddish tint of the dog's coat resembled the drink. Sherry's presence, Morse said, added to the warmth and feeling of informality in the school's early years.
Miss Tucker led Nashoba until 1972, writing reports for each meeting of the school's board. Cowan retrieved them from the school's archives to review when she became head of school in 1992.
"What I found in her was a leadership that I aspired to, because she did have the vision, she was gutsy, she loved kids, and she would stand up for them," Cowan said. "And you didn't have to be the brightest kid to get her attention, you just had to be trying. There was so much wisdom and heart in her reports to the board."
After leaving Nashoba, Miss Tucker used her facility with numbers as a tax preparer for H&R Block and worked with a law firm in Boston until retiring in 1988. Long involved with many organizations, she divided her time among groups as varied as the Women's Lunch Place, the Museum of Fine Arts, Trinity Church in Boston, East Boston Social Centers, and her alma maters, Milton Academy and Vassar.
Miss Tucker's younger brother, Samuel, was killed in World War II. She often spent time with her brother John's children: Handelmann, Virginia Gibson Tucker of Temecula, Calif., and Henry Guild Tucker of Vientiane, Laos. John Tucker died in 1996.
"She also was a loyal friend," Handelmann said. "She took being a friend very seriously."
Following her curiosity, Miss Tucker had regularly traveled around the world, frequently to England, a favorite destination. Just as the details in one book would prompt her to pick up another, discoveries on one trip led to the next journey.
"She had a really inquiring mind," her niece said. "As a result, everything around her interested her."
A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. today in Trinity Church in Boston. 