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Today's Featured Biography

 
Patricia Oaks Tucker

Immediately after graduation, I toured South America with the Michigan Chorale for seven weeks. I met Tom Tucker at MSU and we married in 1962, and then moved to Freeland, MI after Tom graduated from MSU with his degree in Physics. In 1963, I graduated from the Saginaw School of Nursing, specializing in pre/post op and ICU care. From 1966 to 1967, we lived in Lafayette, IN, where Tom earned his Master’s degree in Physics, earning High Scholastic Honors. We moved back to the Saginaw area (and back to Dow Corning) where we lived until Tom accepted a job offer from Motorola in Phoenix, AZ in 1971. For 30 years, we lived in Tempe, Paradise Valley, Phoenix, and Chandler, Arizona (as well as a 14-month business related stay in Denmark). It was while we lived in Phoenix that I opted to make a career change from geriatric nursing to work as an administrative assistant. Hired at Intel in late 1987 to what I thought was to be an admin job, but instead I was given a technical illustrator’s position using software that I had never heard of before – this became a major turning point in my career and my life. I had uncovered a gift for drawing especially highly detailed engineering illustrations, working with very talented engineers and professional writers to create manuals, white papers, customer-specific docs, and so much more. I worked for Intel in Chandler, and then from Kalispell, MT until July 2008 when I retired. We moved to Kalispell, MT in 2002 to 20 acres and a new home we designed after spending almost 9 years of 2-week vacation time in this area. The best move of our lives! Two of our three boys now live in this area: Mike, a Communications Specialist in the Merchant Marines, married with no children; and David, buys/sells products (mostly gaming software), married with three children. Our second son, Jim, is an attorney now residing in the Las Vegas area, married with no children. Tom is fully retired, but I continued to work part-time, supporting high tech companies. I also have a passion for the land-our 20 acres of forest which requires a great deal of work to keep dead and down timber under control. In 2017, realizing a need for efficient cleaners for both permanent and part-time home owners, I started a cleaning service that has been most successful!
In 2020, my life abruptly changed, not due to the Coronavirus but other major circumstances. July 1, 2020, we moved from our beautiful 20-acre home to a much small home on 2 acres. Then on July 22nd, 2020, my husband of almost 58 years, due to a recently diagnosed Parkinson condition, died after falling on our front walk. I closed my cleaning service so that I could work at moving into our home, take care of 1.5 acres of yard, and relearn paying bills (Tom was the money manager in our home). It is now February 2021, and life is still not always easy, especially now with taxes that are due...Tom was a mathematician and he always did our taxes. My Black Lab, Sophie, and I are hanging in there and surprisingly okay. With two sons, one especially with his wife have been a God-sent, living close by so, by golly, Sophie and I will survive. :)

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