Four months after the death of the Founder’s founder, Wes Seeliger, the Board of Directors saw the need of a new Executive Director. Speakers needed to be lined up, and clear direction was needed. The Board asked Bob Tucker, who had retired from his twenty-eight year ministry at First Congregational Church in Houston.

Bob was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, and lived there until he left for Yankton College in South Dakota. Following graduation in 1955, he attended graduate theological school at the University of Chicago. He married Margaret Neufeld in 1956. For the six years following graduate school, he was minister of two yoked churches in South Dakota, one being the church of Laura Ingalls Wilder. One notable program during those years was taking older high school students into the inner city of Chicago for a week work camp and bringing inner city children out to rural America, an eye-opening experience for both.

A five-year teaching assignment in Turkey under the United Church Board for World Ministries expanded his awareness of another religion, Islam, and another culture. The physical remnants of Greek, Roman, Seljuk, and Ottoman civilizations honed further his deep interest in history.

The day that Neil Armstrong took the first human step on the moon greeted his return to the States. Two years at the University of Minnesota as an instructor, administrator and student led to a master’s degree in library science. He accepted a call to First Congregational Church in Houston in January 1972. Some of the accomplishments of those years can be found at the conclusion of this biographical statement.

Along with his work at the Foundation, Bob was for three years the Director of Library Services and a member of the Faculty of the Houston Graduate School of Theology. For seven months while working at these two jobs, he was also the interim minister of an 850-member church in Kansas, driving the 780 miles back and forth every other week, and then flying in the winter months. (Don’t ask how all three jobs were stitched together.) Bob has also taught courses in the Continuing Studies Department of Rice University, the Women’s Institute, and he has preached and/or taught in churches of six denominations.

Bob has Master’s Degrees from the University of Chicago in Theology and the University of Minnesota in Library Science, and a Doctor of Ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary in the Twin Cities. From that institution he was made Alumni of the Year in 2003.

Although theology is the language of church professionals, few see much value in the language once out of school. In contrast, both Wes Seeliger and Bob Tucker saw the dismissal of good theology at the root of many of the problems we have in this world—personal and social. Finding a credible—non-literal and non-dogmatic—theology as a way of enlivening the present has provided continuity in the work of Wes Seeliger and Bob Tucker.

Some of the accomplishments at 500-member First Congregational Church, 1971-1998

·  mentored twenty-four members into becoming UCC ministers (ordained and commissioned)

·  sponsored thirty-nine refugees

· built four Habitat for Humanity houses

· built a 200-unit, rent-supplement housing project

· helped nurture two nonprofit organizations, one local for helping families get the skills to stabilize themselves and the other a national organization working for abused children

· initial sponsor for The Metropolitan Organization (Houston’s expression of Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation)

· engaged the denomination with three members who were General Synod delegates, two members who served on the Board for Homeland Ministries, two members who served on the Board for World Ministries, and one member who chaired the Office of Communication

· developed a full-sized hymnal, now used in 90 churches in four denominations (97% of these are UCC)

· became Open and Affirming