Jerry Tucker, co-founder of Casey County ministries to help needy children, dies at 85

Jerry Tucker, who with his wife, Sandy, created in 1974 a haven for abused and severely handicapped children in the rolling hills of Casey County, died Tuesday. He was 85.

Tucker’s granddaughter, Sandi Davidson, who is treasurer/secretary of the ministries, said her grandfather died in his apartment in the Main Hall on the Ministries’ campus south of Liberty. He had been in ill health for several months.

President George H.W. Bush nationally recognized the Tuckers’  work in 1992 in his Points of Light program in spotlighting volunteers across the country. 

Over the years, the Tuckers cared for more than 2,000 children from all over the world with donations and without government funding. Many of them grew up on the campus and now work there. It now cares for about 35 residents. 

Besides care for the residents, the Ministries operates a private school on the property with 65 students from pre-school to senior high and the  Bread of Life Café and Gift shop about seven miles away off South U.S. 127. Plans are to reopen a thrift store in downtown Liberty.

The total operating budget for the non-profit on about 25 acres is about $5 million. It has about 100 employees, including help from several Mennonite women.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, who represented the Tuckers in Congress praised their “inspirational work” as they gave “the gift of hope for the hopeless.

“Together, they created a safe place at the Galilean Home to care for more than 2,000 children who were abused, neglected and suffering with a wide range of special needs,” Rogers said. “They fulfilled the highest calling that we read about in James 1:27, ‘Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.’ Jerry truly earned his heavenly reward.”

The Tuckers’ grandson, Isaac Tucker, recently was named president of the non-profit.  He wrote in this month’s edition of the newsletter, Galilean Home Shepherd, “Galilean Home was not started by a group of people sitting in a boardroom strategizing. It began with two willing hearts saying yes to the call of God. 

“If you have toured the Home here in Kentucky, you can see it in the land and in the buildings. When they needed more room, they built on. When they needed more storage, they built it. It was not about building an elaborate institution. It was building a place to call home for people “

Jerry met Sandy Tucker on a blind date in their native Detroit when he was a 22-year-old construction worker. They married three months later. Unable to have children, they adopted a son, Jeremy Tucker, who became father of the new Galilean president. The Tuckers later were able to have two daughters of their own and then adopted two Native American girls.

The Tuckers decided they needed more property. They located briefly in Montana and then acquired isolated land in the hills of Casey County. They adopted more children and started a home for severely abused and handicapped children from as far away as Haiti, China, Afghanistan and Guatemala.

In her 1989 book, “Faith, Hope and Room for One More,” Sandy Tucker wrote, “I don’t think God gave me time to think about it. We took every child God sent us.”

Jerry Tucker signed his writings as “Papa Oso (Daddy Bear in Spanish),” a nickname some boys in Honduras gave him while on a trip to help needy children.

Viewing and funeral services for Jerry Tucker will be in the Galilean school gym on the campus. Sunday viewing will be from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. for the family and from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. for the public. On Monday, public viewing will be from 8 a.m. to the start of the funeral at 11 a.m.   A private burial for the family will be after the funeral.

Burial will be in the back yard of a cabin Jerry and Sandy Tucker built on the campus. She died in 2007 of ovarian and colon cancer and is buried there.