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Any given Sunday is a celebration of family at Leon and
Marge Tucker's home in Huntingdon. Following early morning
service at the First Baptist Church, their three sons,
wives and children gather for a sumptuous meal - often the
product of the Tucker's gardening efforts - a carryover
from the days of their youths growing up in rural West
Tennessee.
Marge was born in Woods Hill in Carroll County, just over
the Madison County line, while Leon was born in Henderson
County at Juno.
She started school at the age of four in "primer" class in
a one-teacher schoolhouse in Woods Hill. The next year,
she completed grades one and two, walking to school
wearing long brown stockings and rubber galoshes when the
weather was bad.
" 'Through the snow and the hail'," she says, imitating
the good-natured teasing of her children who have heard
the couple's stories of living in the 1930s.
Three years earlier, when Marge was just one year old,
Leon started school at Moss' Rest School on Highway 104
the the age of five. His early start at Moss' Rest was the
result of living next door to the schoolteacher.
"My neighbor next door was a teacher back when they were
fighting for teachers to go to work," he explains, "so she
hauled me up there to school to provide her with another
pupil." He rode to school in a car when the dirt roads
were passable or by horse and buggy when rain or snow
reduced the roads to a muddy mire.
He later transferred to Mt. Gileid (pronounced locally as
Gilierd.) The lunchroom of the three-teacher school was a
source of extra income for Leon and his mother; the big
pots of stew, beans, peaches and tomatoes were home-canned
in the Tucker home.
"Me and her worked all summer putting that stuff up to
sell to the lunchroom," he related.
Marge was also well versed in the ways of life on the farm
with her father working as a sharecropper for her
grandfather. The family grew cotton, corn and tomatoes
among other crops, with the tomatoes becoming fodder for
the hogs when prices dropped to a dollar per bushel in the
years surrounding the Great Depression.
Every fall when school was out for cotton picking, Marge's
family put out their first bale of cotton before time for
the Carroll County Fair. Each child received $5.00 for
spending money, which Marge says was quite a bit back
then. She learned the importance of budgeting the money
when she splurged the entire amount on a necklace one
year.
"It broke my heart," she lamented, "Daddy bought me a
hamburger but he wouldn't give me any more to spend."
Leon and Marge Tucker met when she
was 15 and he was 19. They have been married nearly
51 years. |
Marge changed schools from Woods Hill to Spring Creek
where she completed the eighth grade, with Spring Creek
students finishing up at Brown's school when their own
school burned down.
Finishing the eighth grade was a big achievement during
years when many of the students' parents had no education,
Leon and Marge's parents being no exception.
Although Leon's father had no formal education and his
mother completed only the second grade, his son relates
with pride that his father taught himself to read the
newspaper and the Bible and "could do anything in the
world with mathematics."
Marge taught her father to read and write while her mom
had been lucky enough to obtain an eighth grade education.
Marge recalls lilacs and irises enhancing her eighth grade
graduation ceremony in which each graduate received a
diploma.
Leon obtained his eighth grade diploma in the Lexington
High School auditorium, where the entire county of eighth
graders graduated together.
Along about this time, when Leon was 12 or 13 years old,
his father went to work helping build the Milan Arsenal as
the nation prepared for World War II, leaving the farm
work to Leon and his mother. He continued his education at
Lexington, three grades ahead of Marge who attended high
school at Trezevant.
The decision for Marge to attend high school in Trezevant
rather than Northside (where she would have had to walk,
come rain or shine) was made possible by the sacrifice of
her grandparents, who swapped houses with Marge's parents
so she could ride the bus to Trezevant High School.
"I didn't realize till I was older what a sacrifice that
was, just so I would have a porch to wait under for the
bus to Trezevant," she says in sincere gratitude.
Leon and Marge Tucker hobbies include
gardening and traveling at home and abroad. |
Leon and Marge met when she was a junior in high school
and he was in his second year of college at the University
of Tennessee at Martin. It's a time period the couple
remembers with laughter. The blissful atmosphere created
by their smiling recollections is intoxicating, and one
can sense the same chemistry that bound their futures
together remains as strong after fifty-one years of
marriage.
It was right after World War II when 19-year-old Leon set
up a theater in a little garage in Cedar Grove, showing a
movie every Friday and Saturday night. Among the regular
spectators taking seats on benches contrived from empty
shell boxes from the Milan Arsenal was 15-year-old Marge.
Leon merrily recollects that every movie had a scene where
a train approached the viewers closer and closer until it
ran right over them.
Leon's method of transportation between the two towns was
hitchhiking, so long as could stay ahead of the bus that
traveled between Lexington and Union City everyday. If he
was unable to catch a ride before the bus came by on its
daily route, he would flag it down wherever he was in
mid-journey and ride home.
One night Leon came into the garage and asked Marge, "How
would you like to go to a real movie?"
Luckily for the couple, Marge's father was not at home and
her mother allowed her to go.
"We went to the Paramount; I don't remember what the movie
was but the cartoon was "Tweety Bird," Marge says in happy
reverie, "He loved Tweety Bird and he had this crazy
laugh; I'm sure you could hear him all over the theatre."
When she returned from her first date, she says, "My daddy
was waiting with the light on." The couple speculates that
her mother may have born the worst of her father's
displeasure.
Her voice becomes gentle as she shares her first
impression of her date with her future husband, saying,
"He was a gentleman's gentleman and I knew, even at 15, at
some point in time we would get together."
Soon, however, Leon left Martin to attend the University
of Tennessee Pharmacy School in Memphis where he spent
three years in the accelerated pharmacy program, taking
only 10 days out in June each year for summer vacation.
Leon had been intent on pursuing a career in electrical
engineering but realized early on that his eyesight was
insufficient for the field, having lost one eye at the age
of eight after a series of childhood accidents.
When he was five, the pointed end of a hickory nut became
lodged in his eye, likely propelled by a slingshot. It
seemed to heal, but three years later a second accident
took its toll on the weakened eye.
"The rest of the kids had gone out to play, but three of
us stayed in the room," Leon recalls, "Two of them got
into it and one threw a cane (fishing pole) at the other
one and hit me. It was sore the next day but three or four
days later I rolled up a piece of paper and looked through
it, and I couldn't see a thing."
Years later while attending classes at Martin, he caught a
ride with a businessmen going down Highway 70 who listened
to his dilemma and says, "Why don't you look at pharmacy;
that's a good profession."
"From that, that's how I came to be a pharmacist," Leon
relates.
Marge graduated from high school at 16 and continued her
education at Draughn's Business College where she studied
bookkeeping, shorthand, and other business courses, paying
her tuition with $300 borrowed from her uncle. To help pay
her way, she stayed in two different homes and kept
children until she got far enough along to get her own
apartment the last three months she was in school. In the
meantime, Leon called every Sunday night or afternoon.
"We didn't have any money to come home on," she says,
confessing that she once sold a pint of blood in order to
raise the money to visit. "We didn't get to see each other
very much for a year and a half."
Instead, letters were the couple's main form of
communication until Marge's graduation the first of March
1951. On Easter Sunday, March 25, 1951, they were married.
"We went to Corinth (to get married) Sunday, and Monday I
registered for my senior year of pharmacy school," Leon
says. It was a busy time for the new husband, working and
going to school everyday.
He worked in the school's library, checking out books
until 30 minutes before closing when he would make his
rounds of the back of the library, rousting the derelicts
who routinely availed themselves of the library's warmth
until closing time.
The couple's transportation woes ended when Marge took a
job with the Chevrolet Motor Division on her first
interview. The job paid nearly $400 per month, $100 more
than Leon would make as a pharmacist upon the couple's
return to Huntingdon the following year.
The day she received her first check, she looked out the
window of their second floor apartment on Jefferson Street
in Memphis to see Leon and his buddy Hollis coming down
the street.
"He brought Hollis for support," charges Marge humorously.
"They had found a '39 Nash and my check would pay for it."
They bought the car for $135 and had enough left over to
get a $5.00 used tire and a head gasket.
The car stood the Tuckers in good stead for their final
year in Memphis. Leon taught Marge to drive and they
visited their parents every weekend, returning to Memphis
with the car laden with canned good and fresh vegetables
for the week's menu.
They traded the car for a Chevy Coupe before leaving
Memphis for Huntingdon where Leon began working as a
pharmacist for Marshall Darnell at City Drugs' downtown
location in January 1952.
Marge was pregnant with the couple's first child, Bob (now
director of Carroll Academy and an ordained Baptist
minister), who was born in August 1952. Their second son,
Tony (a doctor of pharmacy in the now family-owned
pharmacy, City Drugs), was born two years later in October
1954.
After 1955 the family moved to Milan where Leon worked at
Carter's Pharmacy. Marge went to work for doctors
Summerfield and Jones in the Milan Clinic when Tony was
about four years old.
"Tony hated it when I went to work; he hated the
housekeeper," his mother says with concern going back 44
years.
Tony gave his mother a rundown of the housekeeper's
activities in an effort to discredit her enough to result
in her dismissal. One day, his mom recalls, he was certain
he had the final straw.
"She lay down on your bed today, Mother," Marge recounts
him as saying. "I can still see that little face, he
thought for sure that would be the thing that would get
rid of her," she says with mixed amusement and nostalgia.
Tony's concerns were over when a job offer with better pay
took the family to Camden in 1962. Marge kept the home
fires burning while Leon worked at Herndon Drugs. The
couple's third child, Tim (also a doctor of pharmacy at
City Drugs) was born in Camden in 1964.
"Bob (at 12 years old) was embarrassed and ten year old
Tony was thrilled to death," Marge laughed. "Tony wanted
to tell everybody and Bob didn't want anyone to find out."
The next year Mr. Finley Johnson, who owned half of the
City Drugs pharmacy in Huntingdon, broke his back when he
picked up a large cash register. His half of the store was
offered for sale.
"We scraped and borrowed in every way we could to get the
money to buy half," says Marge. They Tuckers became
partners with Maurice and Edna Eldridge who had recently
bought Glenn Joyner's part of the business. Maurice and
Leon were both pharmacists, whereas in the past
storeowners had hired pharmacists to work for them. From
1965 until 1983 the Tuckers and Eldridges remained
partners.
In 1966, the Tuckers bought the home they still reside in
today, having "reworked it and added to it about three
times."
The Tuckers enjoy a close-knit family life and, says
Marge, "Bob is pretty proud of Tim now."
Tim became a pharmacist the first year the doctor of
pharmacy degree was offered, with Tony and Leon
grandfathered in as doctors as well. Upon attaining his
degree, Tim joked that he was the only real doctor,
prompting Leon to reply, "You might be but we were
grandfathered in - we earned it!"
"Tim would be a politician if he was not a pharmacist
already," his mom declares, "He's always president of
something."
Leon and Marge have eight grandchildren and two great
grandchildren with Bob having three daughters (April, who
is mom to the couple's two great-grandchildren, Cari, and
Allie); Tony with son Shannon (age 27, who lives in
Nashville) and Jessica, age16; and Tim with three sons
(Will, Matthew and Jack).
Leon and Marge are active in the First Baptist Church in
Huntingdon where he is a deacon and she teaches eighth
grade girls, a position she has enjoyed, along with
coaching Bible Drill, for about 30 years. She also sings
in the choir.
Marge was the second woman ever to serve on the Huntingdon
School Board, a position she held during the building of
the new high school.
The Tuckers were band booster presidents for two to three
years while Tim played trombone in the Huntingdon High
School Band. In former years, Tony also played trombone
while Bob played saxophone. Both Tony and Bob were
involved in high school athletics as well.
"We had somebody in college forever; they all went more
than four years," Marge says, describing Tony's 5-year
course of study and Tim's six years.
Marge has also been president of the women's club and the
garden club. As for Leon, he says, "Other than church, I
worked 24 hours a day seven days a week." His dedication
to the needs of his customers left little time for more.
The Tuckers have made traveling a hobby second only to
gardening, which fills three freezers and two
refrigerators every year. They have visited Switzerland
and Hawaii, and joined cruises to the Caribbean and Alaska
as well as traveling all over the United States.
In fact it was a 19-day bus trip that led Leon to retire.
The couple traveled to West Chicago, then to Seattle,
Washington and down the coast to Southern California
before heading back east. A flood in Las Vegas created a
beautiful desert with blooming cacti while at Yellowstone
in Wyoming, where they had arrived around his birthday on
June 30th, a blizzard had been raging with ice up to the
bus' windows.
"When we got back I was scheduled out for 19 days so I
just never did come back," he jokes. "Now all I'm doing
now is yard work and gardening." He completely retired in
1999 at the age of 70.
Marge still keeps the books at City Drugs. The couple
turned the store over to their sons in 1995 when it was
still located downtown, moving to their current location
next to the hospital in September the same year.
Last year, the boys joined their parents in celebrating
their 50th wedding anniversary, an event the Tucker's
recall with awe.
"It was beautiful," says Marge of the party that attracted
some 300 friends and relatives.
"Me and her stood at the door and shook hands for two
straight hours, we were so busy I couldn't talk to my old
college friends," Leon grinned.
He was able to make up for lost time with his old buddy
Hollis McMinn, now a retired dentist in Germantown, who he
had roomed with at The University of Tennessee at Martin
as well as while attending pharmacy school in Memphis,
when he traveled to Memphis recently for ear surgery,
spending time with Hollis before the procedure.
With every Sunday a family reunion, the Tuckers have a
full plate of love and laughter and years that are truly
golden to share. |
