Carver Memories – Quiet Revolutionaries
 
Rich and Linda Tucker
 
By Frank MacDonald
 
BELLINGHAM, Wash. --- His voice booms, but it's matter-of-fact and friendly. She speaks in hushed but telling tones. Together, they are a loving, dedicated couple, capable of finishing one another's sentences and gushing about their family and the extended journey that's brought them to this point.
 
They find themselves back on the campus of Western Washington University, where 50 years ago two sweet, soft-spoken students – one black and one white – became, in the carefully chosen words of their daughter, quiet revolutionaries. Revolutionaries rooted in a year regarded as one of the most volatile, tumultuous and socially-charged in United States history.
 
It was 50 years ago, in 1968, when the fabric of America seemed to be tearing from every direction. An unpopular war was being waged in Vietnam. Assassinations took the lives of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. Riots erupted across the country.

Barely a year before, the Supreme Court had struck down all state laws banning interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" brought the topic to the big screen while a "Star Trek" episode's interracial kiss planted the subject squarely in the living room.
 
Ahead of Their Time
 
It was into this world, where a romantic relationship between black and white people would draw gasps, that Rich Tucker and Linda Strand found themselves in the winter of '68: Two young Western students who knew they were right for each other, but way ahead of their time.
 
Today, interracial couples are commonplace, not only in American society but across the media landscape. That didn't happen overnight. It didn't occur because of Sidney Poitier and Spencer Tracey coming to an understanding, or Capt. Kirk and Lt. Uhura locking lips. Things changed because of hundreds of quiet revolutionaries such as Rich and Linda.
 
"I do see my parents as the vanguard," stated their daughter, Sundee Tucker Frazier, who wrote "Check All That Apply: Finding Wholeness as a Multiracial Person," in 2002.

"Interracial marriage was still very new to many states in our country. Certainly, as a nation, it was very shocking," Frazier said. "Now it's become acceptable and beautiful and the way of the future."
 
Today, Rich and Linda Tucker feel very much at home when strolling past Old Main, through Red Square and on to Carver Gym. If ever there was a location where they had projected a heightened profile, it was there, under the signature corrugated roofline of Carver.
 
Rich was a two-sport athlete from Spokane, running the long sprints and record-setting mile relay on the track and also serving as a team co-captain in basketball. Linda Strand was a Vikings' cheerleader who had come from the small town of Suquamish in Kitsap County. Each aspired to be the first in their family to earn a college degree.


(L-R) Linda (2nd from right) - 1966-67 Cheerleader, Rich - 1967-68 Basketball Co-Captain, Rich - 1967 Track - Member of school record-setting mile relay team

A Forbidden Courtship
 
They did not meet in Carver, rather their relationship developed over many dinnertime food service shifts at the Viking Commons in 1966. Linda, then a freshman, checked student ID cards. Rich, a junior, washed dishes. They would talk there and in the library.
 
It was all very understated; no public displays of affection. Just friends, at first. No matter, word and suspicions traveled fast and far.
 
After Linda and Rich sat together at a Western football game, she received an immediate and unannounced visit from her parents. They were not pleased. The Strands had imbued in their two daughters that all humans are equal, Linda said. Nevertheless, when a family acquaintance shared that Linda was dating a black man, she was told to stop seeing him. A few months later, when her parents learned that Rich and Linda were still a couple, they pulled her out of school.
 
It came as a shock to Linda. Her family had not known any black people previously, yet her parents had told her any friends, no matter their race, were welcome in their home.
 
The following fall, Linda's parents allowed her to re-enroll and she reunited with Rich. If anything, they had grown closer; still, few knew they were dating.
 
"That's just how I am; I am not one for public displays of affection, like holding hands or putting my arm around her," shared Rich. "I don't think it was anything we were trying to hide, and it wasn't because we were conscious of being black and white. I didn't think about that."
 
Vows Amidst Silence
 
Only their very closest friends were aware. Aware that Rich considered Linda the kindest person he had ever known. Aware that Linda was wary of losing her family if she pursued the relationship further. Aware that on the eve of final exams, Rich and Linda would be wed in a chapel next to campus on March 13, 1968.
 
None of Rich's teammates and only one of Linda's roommates served as witnesses, out of the couple's fears that there might be repercussions for them. The ceremony was brief. The wedding night, well, was atypical.
 
Rich studied for his final the following day, then returned to his house. Awaiting Linda back at her dorm was a surprise: a bridal shower. "It was very special," she remembered. The next day, Rich took his exam while Linda packed.
 
By afternoon, Bellingham was disappearing into the rearview mirror with Linda sitting happily beside her husband. She had left behind a letter addressed to her parents, whom she never expected to see again. The campus had proven a haven. What awaited, in many cases, was far from heaven.
 
Nightfall found the newlyweds on the north hill of Spokane, at the home of Rich's parents. They had moved into a predominantly white neighborhood during Rich's childhood. William and Willabell Tucker had warmed to the relationship in a matter of days, whereas Linda's parents remained adamantly opposed.
 
Reconciliation
 
Linda was pregnant, and Rich's mother was a woman of conviction. He said: "My mom would've wanted to make it right."
 
Meanwhile, on the west side of the mountains, a pastor was impressing upon the Strands the need to support this young family.
 
There is a family fable, shared by Sundee, of her grandmother Vera Strand playing the piano one evening, trying to calm her soul on the matter of her estranged daughter. As the story goes, Vera closed her eyes and envisioned a phone number. She called it, and Rich's mother answered.
 
Within days, the Strands crossed the state. They pledged their support to Rich, Linda and the first grandchild, who would be Sundee. Further, they invited them to come live in their home.
 
"It was a quick turnaround, all things considered," said Linda. "It was pretty amazing." A 180-degree reversal, added Rich.

"Her parents came a long way," he said.
 
The Strands hosted a full reception for the couple, with wedding cake, punch and all the trimmings. "They had fears and prejudices," said Sundee, "but they worked through them to become fuller human beings."
 
Sundee Tucker was born in October, after Rich had reported to Newport, Rhode Island, for Naval Officer Candidate School. Vern Strand was especially proud that his son-in-law was serving his country. "I think they were proud of their daughter's choice," said Rich, "and all that helped them to rationalize it was OK."
 
A World Away
 
The military, in many ways, provided a protected environment. Still, when Linda and Sundee left Washington to join Rich at Navy Supply Corps School in Athens, Georgia, the grandparents were apprehensive. "My folks were scared to death," said Linda.
 
Only a few months earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in Memphis and buried in Atlanta. Desegregation was not yet complete. The South felt a world away from the state of Washington. The Tuckers took precautionary measures in Georgia.
 
"We didn't go anywhere in the community as a couple," said Linda. "We went as a group so that it wasn't obvious we were together." They told very few people they were married. Their pediatrician was so perplexed by Sundee's olive skin color he suggested she cut back on yellow vegetables.
 
"Thank goodness it was a university town," said Linda. "It wasn't all good, but at least we felt somewhat safe." The University of Georgia there in Athens was only newly de-segregated after federal courts forced the university to accept two African-American students in 1961.
 
Once Rich completed supply corps school, the next stop was San Diego for his first posting. It would be over 2,100 miles in their blue Ford Mustang, not all of it on interstate freeways. "We drove in daylight until we passed the Mason Dixon Line," said Rich.
 
They arrived in San Diego without any housing arranged. Linda had a cousin, a minister, who lived there. But when the Tuckers pulled up, the cousin saw the interracial couple and, instead of welcoming them, instructed them to move on. "You'll be happier with your people," Linda recalled him saying. Later, after spotting an apartment for rent, the manager allowed them to move in, albeit grudgingly.
 
By the summer of 1970, Rich had completed his active duty as a lieutenant junior grade, transitioning to reserves for the next 20 years where he would retire as captain. Upon his discharge his celebratory mood was tempered by the awareness that some of his peers did not make it back from Vietnam.

Come Home, to Western
 
His parents had stressed education as a path to a better life, and although he already had a degree, Rich wanted to return to campus. He had enjoyed coaching his ship's basketball team in the Navy, and he contacted his coach at Western, Chuck Randall, about helping out. Come home, Randall answered.
 
For the first two years of their marriage and raising a family, Rich and Linda Tucker had been on the move: Spokane, Suquamish, Athens, San Diego and finally San Francisco. They had largely kept their lives private.

Western's campus was overwhelmingly white. More often than not, Rich was the only black student in class. In 1968, the Black Student Union had written an open letter demanding campus administrators take steps to address institutional racism, such as bringing more diversity to the faculty, recruiting and supporting more students of color, and investigating racism in the community, particularly in housing.
 
But in returning to Western, Rich and Linda felt free to be themselves for the first time. They moved into a house in Fairhaven and almost instantly it felt like home.
 
"I had lived here for five years; we knew this place," Rich said. "It was a free-spirit school, and it was affirming in that way. This was comfort."
 
Paul Kratzig and Rich had been teammates under Randall. However, a lifelong friendship was forged with the Tuckers once Kratzig's wife, Julie, then a graduate assistant, recognized Rich in an education class. Julie could sense Linda's relief at being back in Bellingham.
 
"She would intimate to me that it was difficult at first, that they feared for their lives in certain areas," shared Julie. "But she never wavered, that's for sure. She was very much in love with her husband."
 
While she has no memory of it, Sundee was a magnet for the Western community. In 1971, the Tuckers moved to Nash Hall where Linda and Rich were resident directors. "Mathes (next door) was the girls' dorm, and we were the parents of all the boys," said Rich. "What they loved was our daughter. They loved Sundee."

 
Rich and Linda with daughter Sundee

A Very Good Year
 
The Tuckers' door was always open. In addition to the students, the Kratzigs would come visit and babysit Sundee. So, too, would Linda's sister, Pam, a resident at Mathes, and Rich's brother Neil, a Nash resident. "It was all family," said Rich. "It was just a comfortable place."
 
The 1971-72 school year was a very good one at the other end of High Street, too. Carver Gym was rocking that winter as Western was rolling to its best ever basketball season. Rich was the Vikings' top assistant coach as they reeled off 21 straight wins, winning the Evergreen Conference and NAIA District 1 championships.
 
Still a cheerleader at heart, Linda recalls Carver coming alive on game nights, particularly the pulsating playoff series against Eastern Washington. Coming from 14 points down, Western won in overtime to force a third and deciding contest for the district crown. The Vikings were victorious again the next night, rallying once more, and this time punching their ticket to nationals at Kansas City, Missouri, where they reached the quarterfinals and finished 26-4.
 
Following that season, Rich completed his second degree, in education (his first bachelor's degree was in economics), and Linda finished her degree, also in education. Later, Rich earned a master's degree in athletic administration from Seattle Pacific University and his career took the Tuckers-including son Isaac–around the state, to Seattle, Pullman, Yakima and Spokane.

The couple now resides on Fox Island. They regularly visit the Kratzigs and annually return to campus, with their grandchildren for Western's  summertime Grandparents U. courses taught be Western faculty. There's always more to learn.


(L-R) Grandparent's U. - Rich and grandson Khalfani, Rich and Linda with granddaughters Skye and Umbria and Viking Mascot
 
Still Connected
 
Six years ago, in October 2012, the Tuckers and Kratzigs joined other Western alumni for a journey to Durham, N.C., to see then-defending NCAA Division II champion Western visit Duke in a preseason game. One day, the two couples ventured a few miles north of the city, to the former Lipscomb Plantation, where  Rich's great-great-grandparents had once been enslaved.
 
Surveying the land of what is now surrounding a bed and breakfast, Rich's eyes were drawn to a very large, very old oak tree. If only that tree could share stories. "It was a powerful, humbling experience," shared Rich. "To know this was where our family's ancestors were slaves, working the land."
 
For all the turmoil, for all the unsettling memories of parents pulling Linda from school, of coming face to face with racism for all of those formative weeks and months of their young family, Rich and Linda Tucker are consumed with remembrances of good times at Western.

Just as Rich's high school track coach Tracy Walters had predicted, he found a second home there, and family has followed in his footsteps.
 
All told, six others from the Tucker and Strand family tree have attended Western. "I suppose they heard enough good things," said Rich, who admits his initial decision to attend WWU was based on a high school coach's recommendation and "a leap of faith."


Rich and Linda with son Isaac and daughter Sundee
 
Finally, Acceptance

Fifty years on, Rich Tucker, sees two narratives. "Yes, this is a story about an interracial, black and white, couple," he said. "But the big takeaway is that it's not only about basketball or track or me. It's about Western becoming our school of choice and a University that we've wanted to stay connected to."

Amid the dozens of demonstrations on campus during the late Sixties, the union of Linda and Rich Tucker may qualify as a peaceful protest to some. A 1958 poll of white Americans showed only 4 percent supported interracial marriage. Sixty years later, only 11 percent of all Americans express disapproval.
 
None of those numbers mean much to Linda and Rich. "They were young kids who fell in love, and they were trying to figure it out," said Sundee, now an author who writes children's books with biracial children as the main characters. "It's amazing the amount of cultural acceptance now."
 
Sundee knows her parents don't necessarily see themselves as revolutionaries of any sort. Yet, to the outside world they did a radical thing. Despite intense societal pressure, they kept their vows, weathered many ups and downs and raised two upstanding children.
 
"Everywhere they go, they are bearing witness to the universality of human beings," she said. "Whether they recognize it or not, it's a powerful thing."


Back Row (L-R): Son-In-Law Matt Frazier, Daughter Sundee Tucker-Frazier, Rich Tucker, son Isaac Tucker
Middle Row: granddaughter Skye Frazier, grandson Khalfani Carter-Tucker, Daughter-In-Law Angie Tucker
Front Row: Granddaughter Umbria Frazier, Linda Tucker, granddaughter Kiara Tucker

Frank MacDonald is a writer and PR consultant who lives in West Seattle. He previously served as sports information director at Seattle Pacific University and communications director for Sounders FC.
 
Presented by Paul Madison who served 48 years as sports information director at WWU from 1966 to 2015. He is now in his fourth year as the school's Athletics Historian.