Keith Tucker: A Legacy of Service

 

The Tucker family before departure from England

 

An Englishman, Keith Tucker trained for the ministry at Bristol Baptist College and did further studies at Regent’s Park College, Oxford, gaining a Master of Arts degree. His first pastorate was at Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England. From there, he moved to Peterborough and then to Sheffield, where he was pastor of the Cemetery Road Baptist Church.

 

It was while he served in Sheffield that Baptist Missionary Society (BMS), in 1948, recruited Tucker for the leadership of Calabar Theological College in Kingston, Jamaica. On May 6, 1948, Tucker, his wife Mildred and their three children – Brian, born 1934, Monica born 1936 and Marilyn born 1946 – left for Jamaica on the ship, SS Cavina, owned by the banana trading company, Elders and Fyffes.

 

Arriving in Jamaica, the Tucker family headed for the Calabar campus at Studley Park on Slipe Pen Road in Kingston. They discovered that their anticipated residence was not available because Tucker’s predecessor and his wife were still living there. The wife of his predecessor had suffered a nervous breakdown and was refusing to vacate the house. Meanwhile, the Tucker found a place in Half Way Tree where they could reside until the Calabar Principal’s house was ready for them a few weeks later.

 

At Calabar, Mrs. Tucker was to be the unpaid matron, taking care of her family, the tutor David Jelleyman, who was then single, and also the twenty Calabar College students, who were all boarders. With a small staff, she was matron with responsibility for catering services and for managing the domestic staff. Mrs. Tucker also did some accounting work. In addition to this, she found time to assist in the work of the young people of the Jamaica Baptist Union, In February 1958, she was the one who presented the report of the Young People’s Department at the JBU Assembly.

 

Mrs. Tucker was to be the last Calabar president’s wife to serve as volunteer matron at Calabar College. After she left Jamaica, she was succeeded by Mrs. C. Blake Martin who was hired to fill the matron’s position.

 

Keith Tucker with Calabar Students

Mr. Tucker served at Calabar from 1948 -1958. He distinguished himself as a disciplined, thorough and visionary principal who, through the confidence he showed in his ministerial students, infused them with much self-confidence. Not surprisingly, with his guidance, three of his students, Horace Russell, Denzil Robertson and Azariah McKenzie were admitted for further studies at universities in England. Clement Gayle, another of his outstanding students, pursued postgraduate work in United States.

 Monkcom also sought to highlight the contribution of outstanding past graduates of Calabar. For example, he commissioned the construction of the Ivan Parson’s Memorial Hall on the Calabar campus.

 

Tucker, Murray-White Calabar High Principal & David Jelleyman

As with his predecessors, Tucker preached widely across Jamaica and was usually warmly received and much appreciated. During his final year in the country, whether he was preaching at the at the Harvest Thanksgiving Service in the Richmond Vale circuit or the Opening and Dedication Service for the reconstructed Trinityville Baptist Church in St. Thomas, the Tuckers’ contributions were celebrated with the presentation of speeches, bouquets and other gifts.

When he passed away in 1967, nine years after he had returned to England in 1958, Tucker left his wife Mildred in Minehead, a coastal town in Somerset, to mourn the loss of a husband whose life she had shared for so many years. Jamaica Baptist Union convened a Memorial Service in Tucker’s honour. At the service, held in the Calabar Chapel on May 18, 1967, Horace Russell and Clement Gayle were two of the speakers. Russell hailed the ten years that Tucker was President of Calabar as “a decade indelibly written in the life of the nation ….” For his part, Gayle celebrated the way in which Tucker thrust himself into the work of the JBU “being here, there, and everywhere — assessing this, suggesting that, and giving encouragement.” Gayle added this: “We who work in the four corners of this fair isle, in theological education, in administering in the pastures, in the schools; we are the Rev. Mr. Tucker’s memorials, and if the pure gospel preached with conviction still claims men and women, demanding allegiance to Christ, this is the greatest memorial of all.”

After he passed away, the Tuckers' legacy of service was to continue. Their son, Brian, who was born in Cheltenham in 1934, baptised at the age of 12 by his father at Cemetery Road Baptist Church, Sheffield, and answered the call to the ministry at the age of seventeen, followed in his father’s footsteps and became a minister. Growing up in Jamaica, he attended Calabar High School and the University of the West Indies (UWI), where he was a student of Natural Science. It was at UWI that he met his future wife, Helen. In 1959, the two exchanged marital vows and were happily married until Helen died in England 53 years later, in January 2012.

Brian pursued theological studies and ministerial training at Regent’s Park College, Oxford. He worked as a Baptist minister in Leigh, Manchester, Wolverhampton, Saffron Walden and Bradford successively. He spent one year as a lecturer at a seminary in Yakusu, Zaïre, now Congo. In Manchester, he pastored the Moss Side Baptist which was where JBU minister Rev. Clarence Samuel Reid commenced his pastoral ministry in England. Brian was deeply interested in mission and, in he became Chairman of the Baptist Missionary Society. Three years after his wife’s passing, Brian died aged 81.

The Tucker’s second child, Monica became a teacher. In her book, Island in the Sun: Growing up in Jamaica 1948-1954, she offers a fascinating account of the six years she spent with her parents and siblings in Jamaica. She credits her younger sister, Marilyn, for her invaluable assistance in this project.