With a handshake as strong and solid as his Southern drawl, and a well-groomed appearance reinforced by a classic dark suit and color-coordinated tie, Randy Tucker seems to epitomize his job title while his wisecracking humor seems less revealing
of his professional calling.
A towering presence standing at 6 foot 3 inches tall, this Southern gentleman could pass as the guy next door whose neighbors enjoy listening to with his stories of yesteryear; a natural storyteller with a knack for words, Randy does not take himself too serious.
As some may not expect of the headmaster of one of the most prestigious girls’ independent secondary schools in the nation, Randy is not an overly-reserved, overly-conservative or even overly-proper person. He unknowingly makes a bold first impression and his witty, genuine, and down-to-earth nature makes him impossible not to like.
For the past two decades, Randy has successfully headed Girls Preparatory School, earning him the title of the longest tenured head of school in Chattanooga – quite an accomplishment considering the average head of an independent school in the United States remains on the job for five years. “It’s a stable environment,” he says of GPS. “GPS knows who it is and what it wants to be, and that creates a great deal of stability and makes it easier to lead.”
Since becoming the school’s fifth headmaster in 1987, Randy has helped raise over $60 million to expand the campus to include more buildings for various programs, and to help increase funds for need-based financial aid and professional development for faculty. In 1991, he accepted the National School of Excellence award in Washington D.C. from then-President George H. Bush on behalf of GPS. Such an award is the highest honor granted by the secondary school recognition program of the U.S. Department of Education. Not only does the school receive high accolades for academics but also for athletics.
“We have the best athletic programs in the state,” he says. “We were the triple crown winning school in TSSAA spring sports.” GPS holds the titles of three-time defending champions in track and two-time state champions in tennis.
Randy maintains that GPS should strive to remain ahead of competitors with constantly evolving technology and advanced curriculum. With control over a $16 million annual operating budget, Randy guides the school’s 175 employees and oversees its 500,000 square feet that includes academic buildings, state-of-the-art classrooms, indoor sports facilities, a 39,000-volume library, a 1,000-seat auditorium, a second theater, music rehearsal halls, dance studios, as well as an indoor pool, three soccer fields, 12 tennis courts, a softball field, two gymnasiums, a climbing tower, an eight-lane track, a 4,000-seat outdoor stadium, and a rowing facility complete with a dock and storage for boats.
Specializing in grades 6 through 12, GPS educates over 700 girls ranging from age 10 to 19. Today’s school is a far cry from its simpler beginnings in 1906 when its small rooms could only accommodate 45 students who each paid $80 per year in tuition.
As a head of a school, Randy is confident yet unassuming; he is not afraid to let his guard down. “My job is not unlike any other independent school headmaster’s job. My days are spent overseeing the day to day operations of the school. It is not grandiose”
He applies a “what you see is what you get” approach to his life and career, which is a big factor in why he has come so far from where he began.
Born during World War II in Hollywood, Florida, Stanley Randolph Tucker, Jr., nicknamed Randy, was his father’s namesake. An executive with a steel company, Randy’s father became a scarce presence after his parents divorced when he was young. His mother worked as administrative assistant to the president of Jacksonville University, the school where Randy would later attend at his mother’s encouragement. Because his two much older sisters, Barbara and Nancy, were not a constant presence in his life, he grew up seemingly an only child. The self-proclaimed latchkey kid grew up inspired by his “humble beginnings” that included “modest means.”
Becoming the “man of the house” early on, Randy knew he needed to earn extra money to help contribute to the household. At 11, he recalls hitchhiking from Neptune Beach to a golf course in Ponte Vedra where he would dive for golf balls.
“I would sit on the edge of the lagoon and when you would hit your ball in, I would go get it for you and you would pay me,” he says. His final attempt at raking his hands along the bottom of 12 feet of water came one day when “I whacked something and it whacked me back.”
“I came up very fast and he came up about 20 yards from me,” he recalls of the “very large alligator” he encountered. The unexpected meeting with the creature would thwart his job plans that summer, cutting his golf ball diving days short.
“I carefully analyzed the risk/reward opportunities and there was more risk than reward,” he jokes.
At that point, the young Floridian joined efforts with a close friend who had purchased a 300-foot beach seine so the pair could earn money selling fish. For five years, Randy and his friend would catch fish and haul them to a local club late at night where they would sell 400 pounds of fish, particularly mullet, to hungry patrons. He recalls yelling “Four for a quarter,” as he sat on the edge of a pick-up truck bed.
Randy enjoyed an unstructured youth, often surfing for leisure. “The fishing was how I bought my surfboards.” At 16, he was the first Florida surfer pictured in Surfer magazine, a photo he still has today. Was he a good surfer? “Only in my own mind,” he jokes. The Beach Boys’-loving teen also enjoyed playing football and basketball; he was and still is particularly fond of baseball – a sport he enjoyed coaching for many years.
“I had a wonderful childhood,” he remembers of his upbringing in Jacksonville. “It was different.” Although he indulged in more independence than most of his peers, Randy admits, “For all my freedom, I was on a very short leash.” His mother still demanded respect from her only son. “We lived half a block from the ocean and I grew up on the beach. She had to trust that I wouldn’t get into too much trouble because she was working and had to work.” He attended public school all of his life and continued to work hard to help his mother.
“To a degree, that freedom also built a strong person, too,” he says of his youth, adding that even as a young man, he had a lot of initiative. “If I didn’t have initiative, I didn’t have anything.”
After graduating from Jacksonville University with a bachelor’s degree in both history and psychology in the 1960’s, Randy found himself being drafted by the U.S. Army. He spent 12 of the 24 months in the Army on a tour of duty in Vietnam which was an eye-opening experience that would prove life-changing and “take me from a boy to a man.”
“The service experience was a powerful one for me,” he says. “It gave me more discipline than I had ever had before. It gave me a much greater sense of purpose. It provided leadership opportunities that I had never had and it gave me the opportunity to watch people lead.” He stresses that this was a critical time in his life and “I was not heroic and I don’t tell war stories.”
Before leaving for Vietnam, he had worked on setting up an interview for a teaching/coaching position at The Bolles School – a reputable coeducational, college preparatory school in Jacksonville. He landed the job. “I left Vietnam on Tuesday and went to work on Thursday,” he remembers.
The twenty-something fast-track youth would accept the position making a modest $6,750 a year to teach full time and coach three sports. Little did he know, he would remain at Bolles for the next 18 years, quickly working his way up the chain of command. His stint as a history teacher and coach was followed by a promotion to middle school principal, director of admissions, assistant headmaster for development, and finally to assistant headmaster for advancement. “I was very lucky that the head of school gave me one opportunity after another.”
In the meantime, while finishing work toward his master’s degree in education administration at the University of North Florida, the 33-year-old won the heart of a young co-ed named Terri Bachara, who was almost 20 at the time and was taking coursework toward her undergraduate degree.
“We met standing in line registering for courses at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville,” Randy says. He admits she struck him as she was “purr-dee,” he says with an exaggerated Southern drawl. “I talked her into taking an American History class with me.”
The couple married a few years later on November 19, 1977. Their son, Trey, came along in 1980 and daughter, Taylor, was born in 1983. Trey, a 1998 graduate of The McCallie School, now teaches English, marketing, and serves as the sports information director at his alma mater while Taylor, a 2002 graduate of GPS, works as a neonatal intensive care nurse in Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1987, the 42-year-old Randy’s tenure at Bolles was nearing its end as he saw little room for continued promotions; he knew it was time for a change. He enlisted the aid of search consultants, commonly called headhunters, to help him seek a headmastership in the United States. Because he had never worked as a headmaster before, the search consultants tried to convince him that he would never find what he was looking for as most schools preferred candidates with a degree from a prestigious school and a lengthy background as a headmaster. Twenty-one years later, Randy can laugh at the naysayers and boast, “They were wrong.”
The GPS Board of Trustees offered him the position of headmaster in “five feet of snow at Heritage Landing.” Randy recalls, “We had barely ever seen snow; they gave us about a week to make a decision.”
He adds, “They took a chance on me.” He is outwardly and obviously grateful for the opportunity that they gave him to prove himself. Uprooting his family from north Florida to Chattanooga had been the family’s first major move out of state and represented a huge leap of faith for them. Although he had been offered other positions at other schools, Randy accepted the position at GPS “because we liked the people, the Board of
Trustees, and their commitment to the school.” Terri says people in Chattanooga were genuine, warm, and friendly.
“It was a real unknown,” Randy says of accepting the headmastership at GPS. He and Terri had never even stepped foot on an all-girls campus until visiting GPS. “I had to have faith and I had to make a lot of changes in the way I did things.”
He says the Board of Trustees were seeking a particular set of skills and a certain personality for the position as this was the year after Baylor went co-ed and they needed a headmaster who would remain committed to helping the school grow not in terms of its student body but in terms of buildings, curriculum, and technology. “The board knew the school had to grow and build buildings and build programs. We had to become committed to math and science because that was going to be the future. We had to become committed to technology.”
He says he wants GPS to remain committed to an outstanding college preparatory education “that is a model and is not just doing what everyone else does, but doing it better.” He wants GPS to continue its commitment to a modern approach to education and instruction. All adults at GPS model a love of learning and a steadfast commitment to the liberal arts tradition. The faculty’s expectations of the students are high concerning both their academic achievements and personal behavior. GPS students are as diverse as its faculty which includes Peace Corps volunteers, Fulbright scholars, a Jefferson scholar, alumnae, a triathlete, organic farmer, professional actress, and a professional soccer player. GPS ultimately serves not only as a school where young girls grow into young women, but where generations of educated women can pursue opportunities made possible by the solid guidance and vision of its founders.
“It is still the founders’ school but they would not recognize it,” Randy notes of the founding ‘mothers’ that included Eula Lea Jarnagin, Tommie Payne Duffy, and Grace Elizabeth McCallie – three schoolteachers who never wed but devoted their lives to educating Chattanooga’s young women.
Randy, a clever jokester, believes a good headmaster should have a sense of humor, as well as a sincere love for children. “You must have a vision of where your school needs to go,” he says. “I think you have to be patient, a leader, and believe in yourself.”
For Randy, the place where he is today compared with the place where he began, seem like lifetimes apart. “My high school classmates are very surprised I’m doing what I do,” he admits, noting how his younger years of carefree surfing and combing the beaches with bare feet do not reflect his present day position where he spends most of his days in three-piece suits.
Now at 62, Randy may best be described as an accomplished, intelligent, professional educator with a passion for his family and work. The genuine funnyman calls his position as headmaster a partnership. “It is not something you do by yourself,” he says, noting how Terri plays a pivotal role in his career. She, too, works at GPS as a cheerleading coach. “We are in the business of family. We are a family.”