Deborah D. Tucker oral history

SAM GARRETT: I am Sam Garrett, with Ciera Farmer, and we are interviewing Debby

Tucker. I am at my home in Dallas, Cierra is at the University of Texas at Austin campus,

and Debby is at her home in Austin. Debby, do you give us permission to record?

DEBORAH D. TUCKER: Yes, sir.

GARRETT: Thank you. Can you tell us where were you born and where you grew up?

TUCKER: Of course. I was born in Lanett, Alabama. My mother was pregnant with me

when she was Homecoming Queen, but it wasn't a big deal in those days. The superintendent just said,

you know, “It's the only Catholic family in town, so of course she might be pregnant.” And my father

was a football star and later played football at Florida State with Burt Reynolds,

and so that's kind of where that started. And we went from there kind of back home to Lanett after

Florida State, and my father said, “gosh, you know, Jo, I think I'm leaving.” And fortunately,

my grandfather said to my mother “You don't have to live the rest of your life in the dark,

you can start again, you can decide what kind of life you want to have and go forth unto,”

and later she married a wonderful man who essentially is my father Ron Tucker.

And I have one brother, Michael Tucker, and then later, I learned that I have four sisters,

because my biological father married again twice. And I've just recently started talking to them

in some depth. I never knew them growing up, and they didn't know me.

But we've started talking recently so that's kind of interesting to meet family way down the line.

My father was in the air force and that led us all over the place, and he was a pilot instructor,

so I finished high school in greater Del Rio Texas. And I had two choices to go to college,

where he went or was a formal resident, which is Connecticut, or

to go where we were living, which was Texas. So, I came up to Austin with really

not a very good idea about who I was or what I wanted to be, and so I enrolled in education

and decided to work with the visually challenged and hearing impaired and worked, learned how to

do sign language and braille and how to maneuver with a cane and all kinds of interesting things.

But while I was at UT, along with two other roommates in an apartment off campus,

we were essentially stalked before that term was even coined and used, and we had someone

who was consistently leaving notes for us or calling and threatening us, and we became aware.

All three of us had not ever been exposed to being afraid or worrying about our safety,

and so we had to live through that together. And we ended up working with the Austin Police

Department attempting to identify who the person was and where, what could be going on,

you know, to stop it. And that just opened up my eyes to so many things that I didn't know about

and I spent a lot of time at APD looking through picture books of people who'd been arrested

for sexually related offenses and trying to see if I recognized anybody.

It was really a learning experience at that point, and it just took me from there to volunteering as

part of the first rape crisis center in Texas and one of the first in the country to be established.

And I just kept learning as I went along, as did the whole movement, I think. I mean my experience

is very ground floor being part of it from almost the beginning here in our state.

GARRETT: Did you begin volunteering, while you were in college or after—

TUCKER: I did indeed, I did indeed. I was finishing up my student teaching

at the Texas School for the Blind and then as the rape crisis center was organizing,

I started volunteering, and. I ended up with a regular shift, where I was answering the phone

and trying to be supportive to anybody who called in. I started going with people

to Brackenridge Hospital— is where all of the victims of violence were taken because there

was a full-time law enforcement presence and a capacity to make a report if you wanted to,

to law enforcement. We developed some of the first policies that were modeled—

a model for other cities and states on how to work with law enforcement

when the victim did not want to be identified or to identify the person who had harmed them

in a formal way. But we had a system for collecting the information so that we could

recognize patterns. I remember the very first case that I testified in as a— in a criminal

case of a person who had committed a number of sexual assaults in the Austin area, about ten

of the victims that were part of helping us to make this case were people who had not filed an

actual formal report, but because they were in our system, we could bring forward their information

and help to show the consistent pattern of where this person operated and what kinds

of behavior they engaged in with a whole host of victims. And there were about twenty-five people

who came to the lineup to try to identify, you know, where you stand up

six or eight or ten people and you ask the victims of the crime to step up and see if they can

recognize the person who had harmed them. There were about twenty-five victims there, so I helped

to organize that, to identify somebody who had been a very frequent perpetrator in our community.

One of the things that I experienced, and y'all ask me about this later, is I got to go to a

lot of other countries and learn from them as well, and one of the things I remember about

my first line up in Lima, Peru; it was conducted by getting the guys in there standing them up

and then rolling a piece of plywood in front of all of them with a peephole for the victim to look

through. So, they would bring the victim in with this piece of plywood to protect their safety,

and this is ingenious, you don't have to have money for a giant room with big windows,

and mirrors, and all this stuff, you can do a lineup with a piece of plywood.

So I loved learning about other approaches to get it done.

GARRETT: That is interesting. When did you get started in working in foreign countries?

TUCKER: Well, I started volunteering, I think it was ʼ74

and I went to work there as an actual employee of the Austin Rape Crisis Center

I think in ʼ75 or ʼ76 we’ll have to— (Unintelligible) Pardon?

GARRETT: I believe your resume says ʼ75.

TUCKER: Okay, well, I figured that out at some point so it's in there,

and I remember being part of one of the earliest volunteer classes and learning everything that

I could and being sort of fascinated by all that people were trying to figure out. And when I went

to work there, I just delved in completely. I mean when they called me saying, “Okay,

it's time for school to start again,” and because I've been hired at the deaf and blind project at

the Austin State School and was teaching fourteen people who'd never had a teacher before. And they

said, “It's time to start again.” I'm like, “Oh my gosh I'm sorry my life has changed in the summer.

I thought I was just going to lay around and swim and it turned out that I got this opportunity

to learn so much and I'm going in a different direction altogether, so I'm not coming back.”

GARRETT: When did you start working in foreign countries?

TUCKER: Probably my first couple of trips were, like, of course to Mexico was very easy to make

a connection with people in Mexico, who were struggling with some of the same problems and

I've continued to be very, very close to all of them over the years that lead the efforts

in Mexico. And I think my first trip— Oh, I should have printed out my resume so I could look it up.

My first trip to Peru may have been late seventies, early eighties.

I first went to Bogota, Colombia and then I went on to Peru and that's where I started really doing

things in South America and I’ve also— I got to go to Portugal and Spain and oh lots of other places,

over the years, I think I counted it up one time and I've worked with, like, 17 countries.

GARRETT: I just checked your resume. Said you went to Colombia in ʼ84.

TUCKER: Oh my gosh. Well, I thought it was earlier than that. No?

GARRETT: Well, maybe you went multiple times. I don't know, but—

TUCKER: No, that's probably right. That's probably the first time I went.

But yeah, it all feels mushed together for me because there's a phase where I was working mostly

locally, trying to lead the Austin shelter and to connect the rape crisis centers and the domestic

violence agencies together connect across cities across states, and so it all just kind of mushes

together for me and I'm not sure what happened in 1982 that sort of your cut off in this discussion.

But there was so much that happened initially and then that continued, where people

formed relationships and opportunities to work with people that lasted for a number of years.

GARRETT: How would you say your work in foreign countries may have influenced

what you did in the United States?

TUCKER: Oh, it informed me that there's more than one way to do things for sure,

and to not be so much in a box of background. I mean there were a lot of people who were hesitant

to permit volunteers, for example, to do any kind of crisis counseling

or to give basic legal information. And there was the sense that maybe we were practicing law or

other kinds of professions without a license. There's only one time that I actually did that

and that's I filed a brief on a legal case, and they called me up and said, “Ms. Tucker,

you didn't put your bar number on this brief.” And I was like, “Oh my gosh, you know what,

I've thought of several things that need to be added to that, let me come by and pick that up.”

And then I got a real lawyer to file it. (laughs) Because I wasn't a lawyer, I wasn't even supposed

to go there, but I forgot, so you learn as you go. And we struggled with

how much background did you have to have and what I finally came to realize is that

seat-of-the-pants personal experience, people who had been victims of violence, or even people who

had used violence at some point in their lives, and all of us who cared, we all brought stuff to

the table that we all learned from each other. And so you need all aspects of the community,

you need the religious community, the educational community, you need the people who are in systems

like law enforcement. And prosecutors and judges and probation, all the people in the criminal

justice system, you've got all sorts of people who have a slice of the information and a role to play

in trying to end the use of violence and to try to support people who have been harmed, at the same

time, challenging and encouraging those people who have used it to stop. There's so many roles

and there's the Center for Disease Control's model of, like, you got to work with family.

You got to work with the individual, with family, with community, and with society.

And you got to be constantly thinking at all those levels so when I think about the foreign

component to what I learned, that helped me with the societal aspect, it helps me to see that,

because everything is not exactly the same all around the world. And people are creative and come

up with alternative strategies and approaches, we can inform each other across those lines.

I don't know if that made any sense at all, but I babbled.

GARRETT: No, it did. It was interesting. (Tucker laughs) In 1976 you left the Austin

Rape Crisis Center to join the Texas Health Care Association. Can you tell me why you

joined the Texas Health Care Association and what kind of work you did there?

TUCKER: It was an opportunity to learn about how the Texas Legislature works and to have a quote

unquote regular job, and the only paying jobs I'd had at that point was working in the cafeteria at

Jester Center, which was an experience as well, and then at the rape crisis center. So,

I wanted to see how other kinds of organizations and entities worked and I learned a lot there

and still occasionally run into the man who was the director while I was there,

because they were very active in the legislative process in Texas and federally. And my job was

special projects assistant, so I got to do things that were related to the legislature, but lots of

other things too, like I got to help organize the statewide domino tournament, which was a blast

of all the people in nursing homes, who wanted to play dominoes. And I got to do the beauty pageant

for the State of Texas nursing home residents, that was a blast so it was a different life,

a different experience and while I was there is when we started meeting every Tuesday night

to see about opening a shelter for victims of domestic violence,

and so it gave me a day job. And it gave me the opportunity to do that organizing work in concert

with a lot of other people and to figure out how we could open a shelter during that time.

We also invited the lady who organized one of the very first shelters in the world from Chiswick,

England to come and speak to us, and Erin Pizzey was her name, and she had written the book Scream

Quietly or the Neighbors Will Hear, and that was very helpful. We also brought in Del Martin who

wrote Battered Wives as a project of the National Organization for Women, and so those people help

to stimulate our understanding in a broader way. And at the health care association that director

was so supportive that he permitted me to use their Xerox machine to print off the very first

volunteer handbooks that we gave out at the rape crisis center because we didn't have any money,

we were just trying to do this by hook and crook and it was a very nice gift at that point.

GARRETT: So, in 1977 you became the Executive Director of the Austin Center—

Austin Center for Battered Women. Is this correct?

TUCKER: Right, right. That was our original name, um, we, I had been a part of that organizing

group that met every Tuesday night. We did hire someone else to be our first director

and that didn't really work out so well and I had started going to get my master’s in public

administration at Texas State University, because I had realized that what was

my passion was social change and creating different responses to issues, and while I

feel like my experience in education informed me in a lot of ways that were helpful, I realized

that I was going in a different direction. So I'd started into school and at first I didn't think

that I should even consider applying because I was going to school full time,

but it was too enticing to think about being part of strengthening the center for battered

women and making it a contributor to ending violence into the community. I just couldn't,

I couldn't resist, and I applied and I fought hard to get the job

and I did the job for five years during which I did complete my masters at Texas State University

driving down there at night to take classes, but I had infinite energy. I mean I was, I was in my

twenties, I could get by on four hours sleep and keep going and, so I loved it. I loved doing both.

GARRETT: You also went to the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Right?

TUCKER: I went to a special course there, yes, that was designed to nurture and encourage women

to play a greater role in public affairs and so that was a great opportunity.

And I'm not sure when it was that I went through Leadership Austin through the Chamber of Commerce,

but that was another eye-opening experience to listen and I think I was in maybe the second

class that we had of Leadership Austin and I met a lot of amazingly wonderful people and had

the opportunity to hear from a lot of folks that were in leadership roles and different aspects of

of government, as we say in Texas, and then the community and how they partner to get things done.

GARRETT: For reference you were in Leadership Austin from 1980 to 1981.

TUCKER: Well, it counts. (laughs) It’s in the designated time frame.

GARRETT: Yes. So, you were there at the Austin Center for Battered Women for five years, your

previous jobs, you had only been there for about a year. Was it nice to have a bit more stability?

TUCKER: Oh absolutely, it gave me a chance to delve in more so I was really learning as much

as I could and trying to help lead and build an organization over time. And one of the bonuses

I guess during that period is that we got a call from “60 Minutes” and they wanted to talk with us

about being part of a specific program to look at domestic violence around the United States.

And I had no worries or really any expectations around that. I was just like, “Well, this is cool,

this is an opportunity for information to get out all across the country,” and

a lot of other people were worried because “60 Minutes” had the reputation of kind of

going after people and exposing what they hadn't done right. But I had such a southern belle

attitude about it, it was like, well let's just meet these people and see what they want to know.

And they turned out to be lovely. Dan Rather was the correspondent who, I think, is a member

of this collection too at the Briscoe Center, there's a Dan Rather interview. And

he was the person who came to talk with us about what we were doing, and surprisingly they ended

up deciding to kind of frame that whole interview of our program around the experience of the Austin

community and then add in some information from other parts of the country. And that was the most

watched segment of “60 Minutes” that season. It got a lot of stimulation to the whole movement

across the country, so I've always thought that was such a great gift

that we were able to be part of that and to sort of strengthen the community's understanding

of what we were doing, not only here but, but all around the country and around the world.

GARRETT: That is interesting. How would you say the popularity of the “60 Minutes”

segment affected your work in Austin in particular?

TUCKER: It brought different people to us that might not have noticed us before.

We had, the night that the show aired, we had so many phone calls, that our phone system collapsed

just from people who wanted to touch base and from people who needed help, who needed information and

support about how to deal with being the target and of a person who wanted to use violence.

So, you know, that was fascinating, and it changed the perception of a lot of leaders, I think, in

the community. Yes, we were all feminist radicals that wanted to change the world, and we wanted to

work with them and respected them and wanted to hear from them and we were not trying to be

totally hardheaded. (laughs) We did have some bottom lines, and we found lots of people who

agreed with us and when they peeled it all back, realize that they too shared many of our same

values. They were just a little bit worried about who we were and what we believed in.

GARRETT: You left the Austin Center for Battered Women in 1982 but before that you became a partner

and president at Ariadne Associates in 1979. Can you tell me a bit about what you did there?

TUCKER: Yes, there were four of us who partnered together to start doing some consulting and

training. We were doing— we were helping both individuals who were trying to set up

businesses or growing something that they already had who needed advice and support.

We were doing some training for people who wanted to understand issues that impact women

and families, so we were doing some of the stuff as a little partnership that eventually informed

and helped us to think about the Texas Council on Family Violence and other things that followed to

lend support to the movement as a whole. And so it started out little and just four of us

and we had a blast and then we kind of went off to continue other ways to meet those same needs.

GARRETT: So in 1980, for example, at the same time, you were— in the same year,

you were working at the Austin Center for Battered Women, and Ariadne Associates, you were

taking a special course at LBJ School of Public Affairs, and you were at the Leadership Austin.

Did you find it difficult to balance all these things at the same time?

TUCKER: Of course, and that's what I was talking about earlier about the infinite energy that I

seem to have had in those days. I mean, I remember coming home from being at the hospital with

somebody who had been seriously harmed and was in a great deal of emotional and physical pain,

being with her until the wee hours of the morning and coming home and taking a shower and putting

clothes on and going to court and testifying and then going from there to the UT law school to give

a speech. And going from there to a city council meeting and going from there to a community

event where ladies were having tea, and I was hoping to raise some money. I could keep going

unbelievably then, and I was lucky that so many opportunities were there while I had that energy

to connect to all of it and to try to keep strengthening our organization and our movement.

GARRETT: You described yourself as a radical feminist. Would you say your family was

supportive of you during this time?

TUCKER: Absolutely, um, I don't know if they would call me that, but I know that I'm a

great combination of all of my family behind me. And I remember at some point talking to them,

my parents in particular, about the fact that what I had learned from each of them and how it had

helped me to engage in different activities or live up to the expectations that I had for myself

and from others on being a leader and being responsible. My dad was a military officer,

he knew that there were ways to do things, but he also knew that sometimes you gotta step outside

the rules and the regs, and you gotta question, and you've got to

push for change where it's needed. My mother, you know, was an excellent hostess,

the friendliest person you ever wanted to know. She volunteered as part of the family

response teams within the military that supported people who were having difficulties of any kind.

She ran a tight ship of a household. I knew how to manage a whole lot of different things

at the same time by emulating these people, and they were so encouraging to me and my brother

that each of us always felt that core of love and respect and support.

And it made me feel aware of how many people when I started working at the rape crisis center

and meeting one of the families I met really early on, there were six children. And what the

father did was he took the doors off of all of the bedrooms and each child had a night,

and he would move from child to child. Sometimes, he wouldn't sexually assault them,

he’d just sleep with them, but most of the time he would engage in some kind of sexual violation

of these children, male and female in a rotation. And there was no privacy, no safety, no concept

among those children that they should have any respect and have any boundaries.

That was one of my earliest cases that I was involved in at the rape crisis center,

and the contrast between those kinds of cases and my own family was very, very dramatic for me.

I realized how lucky I really, really was that I had such fine people around me.

GARRETT: What about the community at large? Would you say they were supportive of your work?

TUCKER: Well, it wasn't right off the bat that everything worked as well as we would have hoped,

but there were, there were inklings and there were over time changes. Like at first,

law enforcement people kind of were hesitant, they thought that we might

expect them to change too much and we sure as hell did, and yet we tried to go about it

in partnership with them. And maybe ten years after a really, really bad clash

the lobbyist for the city of Houston's police department got in touch with me and sort of

apologized for being such a jerk back when in the beginning of our relationship and

how he would go to great lengths to disagree or push against anything

that I was proposing or that we at the Texas council or anywhere we're asking for change.

And he basically said, “Arguing with you brought the greatest growth in me professionally

of any experience I've had.” And I thought that was such a fabulous compliment,

because when you're trying to ask people to look at their own conduct in their own profession

and to see what they could do differently, and they can appreciate that at some point. Not in

the moment usually, none of us really like being told that the way we're approaching

something or doing something is less than effective. But later, you can come to see,

“Gosh that was a good point, and when I opened myself up to those different opinions,

I saw some changes that were worthwhile.” When you hear that from somebody that you've harangued

with, you know that that's a huge success in creating community and societal support.

CIERA FARMER: Did your community— the relationship that you had with the community

see you in a similar way that, for instance,

this man did, where they viewed you as wanting too much change? Or how did they see you?

TUCKER: I think, as a general statement that's true. But

we are fortunate, I think, in Austin to have a lot of sort of free thinkers and

working at the local level, we had tremendous support from a lot of different segments.

And very early on, for example, Ann Richards was a Travis County Commissioner at that point,

she and the mayor, Jeffrey Friedman, was the Mayor of the city of Austin and then later Carol Keaton

Rylander, they were willing to help us stand up the rape crisis center and the shelter and to make

changes in policy and practice within the entities that they dealt with every day, and that they had

leadership roles with. And so we had, we had people who became natural partners very quickly

and entréed us to other allies and colleagues of theirs. And then we also had people like this man

who initially didn't want to have a relationship or to work with us, but over time, we were able to

help them see the benefit of

us talking and us learning from each other. And because of my own personal experience,

in college, I had already met some of the leaders within the Austin Police Department and very

early on some of the folks at the Travis County sheriff's department, they were very helpful.

The district attorney, Ronnie Earle, was at first kind of hesitant and thought that we might be,

I don't know, was one of the first times I remember being accused of not being

familiar with the Constitution and the rights of individuals, that I was asking for too much

change in the practices. But, over time, when you work with people,

when you harangue with people, when you find a judge that agrees or somebody that has a

relationship with that person who says, “You know, gosh, I'm really sorry to hear that y'all aren't

being able to come to an agreement, can I help?” I saw some of that happen, where people would broker

with us an opportunity to problem solve around things that we were maybe seeing differently,

and it kind of goes back to the fact that none of us want to necessarily be asked to change. I mean,

we talked about that we're open to change, that we want to keep changing and growing

and getting better and blah-blah-blah and then, when it comes down to it, it's hard

to hear that the way you're doing something really might need to be looked at more closely.

And most people their initial reaction is to resist. That's just that's just human nature.

Right? So, I learned not to take it so personal, I mean, I really wanted people to like me

and to like what we were doing and to become passionately supportive of what we were doing.

And I learned that my timing might not always be the same as theirs, and they might

come back around on the guitar at some point, and we could do it differently.

FARMER: So, you mentioned how working with people over time kind of helped them come to compromise

with you. Did that ever cause any change in you, any change in your ideas or how you approach

situations or maybe how you approach people who didn't agree with the change you wanted to bring?

TUCKER: Oh absolutely. I have to hope that over time

they informed me from their perspective and their view and their roles and responsibilities

about how they've made their decisions and that could help me to understand, but also

I would say that I got– as I expanded my understanding of how it all

interrelated, I could do a better job of thinking about how to approach it and just

sort of lay out the benefits to all parties of coming to a different understanding or approach.

And one of the things I remember doing is asking for, could we for just three months,

try to do it this other way and see how it works and come back together and decide,

is it better or not. That was very effective. The other thing I remember doing is anytime

somebody called and complained about the way a law enforcement officer had spoken to him or her,

I would ask the staff person or the volunteer that was working with them

to really do a detailed interview and to really understand what was off-putting

and what was difficult and what they felt, how they felt judged, or what made them complain,

so that we could get to the core of that. And then sitting down with the chief of

police and several of the leaders in the police department, who do the training and

administration and saying here's our findings here's the things that we're hearing from

the people that we're trying to assist that you're trying to assist. What do we need to do

to better educate and support law enforcement officers to in turn support victims of crime?

And that was very successful, so it wasn't a huge research study that took a year. It was

three months of delving in deeply, asking more questions trying to learn and then sharing it.

FARMER: Where did your work that you just described, working with the police department and

figuring out how to help them help people, where did that take place?

Was that at the Austin Rape Crisis Center? What, where were you working at the time?

TUCKER: Yes, that was partially at the rape crisis center but then later on as well

at the center for battered women, and then it sort of kept snowballing. I mean, I have a

document somewhere, I think we created maybe late eighties, on evaluating your community response

that we got a lot of other organizations around the state to review and polish with us

so that we could help other communities look at what was happening with various segments.

And it comes back to the fact that we can't by ourselves end domestic and sexual violence or the

stalking and abuse of children and none of these things can be ended just by the activist

and service providing community, it has to change, as we make agreements with people

throughout our society and create the shifts in attitudes and beliefs that lead to the behaviors

changing by the persons who use the violence and by the people and entities that respond

to the violence and so everybody plays a role. It’s one of my favorite examples. I don't know

what year it was. I apologize, I don't know. But I was— got a phone call from somebody who says,

“Ms. Tucker, I am the President of the Texas Pest Control Association.

And there are six of us sitting around a table in a bar, and we're talking about that we don't

know what to do when one of our people that's spraying for bugs calls us up and says, ‘You know,

it looks like this lady has been beat up,’ or ‘It looks like this kid has been harmed. What do I do?

What do I say?’ And we realize we didn't know. We didn't have a clue, so we felt like we needed

to find somebody to tell us how we could help our customers who are being hurt in their own homes.

And yeah, we can spray for the bugs, we can try to get rid of the spiders and the ants and the this

and the that, but if we walk out the door and we know they're in danger, we don't feel good

about that. So, what do we do?” And I ended up having this conversation with six men in a bar,

talking about how the pest control association of Texas could transform the way that their employees

reacted when they saw something like this, and I thought that was phenomenal.

It demonstrates that anybody can make a difference.

I don't know how I got off to them, but that was interesting. (laughs) (unintelligible)

I'm sorry, Sam. What did you say?

GARRETT: In 1982 you became the Executive Director of the Texas Council on Family

Violence. Can you tell me why you joined and what kind of work you did here?

TUCKER: Well, actually Toby Myers of Houston and I were among the cofounders of the Texas Council

on Family Violence. April 8, 1978, I hosted the first meeting in Austin of people from

around the state who were interested in responding to domestic violence to figure out how to prevent

and intervene effectively in domestic violence. Toby and I were among those first people

and we, along with a lady from Fort Worth, were the original incorporators of the Texas council

and set up this organization. We knew so little then that we tried to file

the name of it as the Texas commission on family violence because we thought that sounded real

professional, and we got this letter that said, “A commission is appointed by the governor and

approved by the legislature. You cannot use that name to create an entity in the State of Texas.”

It was like oh, okay. So that's how we became the Texas Council on Family Violence, and

we got going. And there were very quickly thirteen organizations that were a part of it, and then it

went to eighteen, and then it became clear that there was so much work that needed to be done,

that we needed a full-time staff and that I could not manage supporting the continued

growth of the Austin Center for Battered Women and lift up the Texas Council on Family Violence

without working for it full time. And the universe provides.

This wonderful, wonderful man called up and said that he was with the Levi Strauss Foundation out

of California, that he had seen the “60 Minutes” program, that he wanted to help us to grow.

And he offered us 75,000 if we could find 75,000 from other people.

And we could start an office for the Texas Council and have a paid staff, and It was, like, wow!

So you can see that interconnection of the Austin Center for Battered Women being selected by “60

Minutes” to sort of be a profile of the movement and how that led to financial support from Levi

Strauss to open the Texas council office, so I basically said to the Texas council leadership,

“If I can figure out how to raise this matching $75,000 to draw this money down from Levi Strauss,

I want that job. I want to really move from here to the State level and to keep trying to figure

it out.” And I'll never lose my connection to the Austin Center for Battered Women. In fact,

a few years later I helped be part of the team that facilitated the merger of the Austin Rape

Crisis Center and the Austin Center for Battered Women into SAFE, and just a few years ago

SafePlace that we helped create then merged with the Austin children's center,

and now it's the SAFE Alliance. So that has evolved over time as well, had its own history.

But I don't know what I was talking about in the beginning of this, but at any rate,

the point is that this Texas Council on Family Violence got stood up. It connected to a whole

lot of other things that had gone on before and the generosity and interest of Levi Strauss

in supporting giving us an opportunity to work at a different level. And we had to raise the money

from other people to match that. That's where Travis County stepped up, the Hogg Foundation,

others stepped up and gave us a little bit of money to keep going. Oh, gosh, there were several

foundations that helped to raise that match, and then we also got our first state funding

push through to support local domestic violence service delivery through the great State of Texas.

And we charge membership dues for the Texas Council of Family Violence

to get the— to represent, in a way, an association of the programs, so all of

that led to enough money to draw down and open the office. Does that make any sense at all?

GARRETT: It did. You won a number of awards throughout your career, the first of which

listed on your resume was a Texas Legislative Honorary Resolution from the Senate in 1983.

Did it feel good to receive recognition from your work?

TUCKER: Oh, absolutely. In fact, I have them right over here on the wall.

They— It was such a wonderful surprise, really. I did not know that was going to happen,

and to get somebody coming and saying, “You need to go to the floor right now. They need

you,” it's, like, what? And it turned out to be for such a lovely, lovely reason:

to just acknowledge that I'd helped to create change. And so yeah, those

resolutions mean a lot to me and again shows that partnership was created, and then understanding

and commitment grew by working with people from a wide range of backgrounds. And the

legislature is made up of folks from all kinds of professions and belief systems, and

I've made a lot of good friends. I also made a lot of mistakes along the way trying to figure

it out. One of my favorite stories on myself is being in a senator's office one day and saying,

“Gosh, you sure have a lot of elephants,” and he said, “Well, Debby, I'm a Republican,” and I went,

no! (laughs) I didn't even think of that. You have all these elephants because you're a Republican!

It's like I was sometimes oblivious to things that were sort of obvious, right? I didn't really worry

about that that much. I didn't care what party you were in or I cared if you were concerned,

if you were committed, if you wanted to create the changes that would stop the use of violence.

One time we were— there was a move by one of the senators from San Antonio to do away with the

defense to prosecution or to reestablish the defense to prosecution that we had gotten rid of:

that you had a sudden rise of passion and you couldn't control yourself and you just killed

them. And we had gotten rid of that and he wanted to put it back, and so people were all

confused on the Senate floor they were like, Didn't we already deal with this topic? And

he was trying to push for it, so Governor Bullock just sort of was like, “Deborah,

go talk to this man,” and I went behind the Senate area and met with him. And

we were talking, and then he said, “Let's go get on the elevator and go up to my office.” So,

we go towards the elevator, and he's continuing to talk to me and there's all these senators in the

elevator. And I just said, “Senator I am feeling a sudden rise of passion that I cannot control,

and I am getting mad with you,” and everybody just flattened themselves against the walls of

the elevator. They were like, Oh no she's finally gonna go off, and then we all started laughing and

he realized that his legislation was just a way that people who had used horrific violence were

trying to get an excuse for that. And he withdrew the bill, and I considered that a huge success

in terms of helping somebody to understand that we have to be responsible for our own choices.

And, yes, there can be a lot of reasons for getting angry or wishing that somebody would

do things the way that you want them done. But that ain't the way it ought to work,

and you have to respect other people, and you certainly can't threaten or harm them.

GARRETT: Let's move back a bit chronologically and talk about

some of the organizations you were a member of or

chaired. You were a member of the City of Austin Commission for Women from 1978 to 1980.

TUCKER: Oh, yeah. Another real good opportunity to learn. Aralyn Hughes was the chair of it. We

are still devoted friends to this day. She taught me a lot. There were many people there who had a,

you know, range of experiences of leadership in Austin, and I was really pretty young

and learned a lot from those women and from the city staff who worked with us

about how to get things done. And I found it a great experience to be a part of that.

GARRETT: You were a Cofounder and on the Executive Committee for

the Austin Area Human Services Association from 1981 to 1984. What did you do there?

TUCKER: All of the entities in Austin that were providing

social change and social services support came together because many of us

were working in some of the same areas or had overlapping concerns. And we also wanted to

advocate for greater governmental and community based financial support for all of these entities.

We didn't want to compete against each other for a teeny little pot of money, we wanted

to grow the pot so that all the different needs that we had identified by virtue of

starting our organizations could be addressed more effectively. And so we became partners, instead of

competitors, and it gave us a way to speak up as a whole, on behalf of our community and what

it needed. And so it was a blast, and again it was a way to work with people a bit differently

than had been done before. Folks used to go in and testify, for example, to the city council

or to the county commissioners about why their organization needed money, but they would never

necessarily think about saying, “And if you don't support this organization and that organization,

we won't all be able to do our job.” So the Austin Area Human Services Association

was us coming together and realizing our interdependency to create a stronger community

and that we had to advocate on behalf of all of us to bring that about.

GARRETT: Thank you. You chaired the Mental Health Committee in Austin/Travis County

Integral Care from 1979 to 1984. Can you elaborate on what you did there?

TUCKER: Sure. Most of the people involved in that committee

had family members or experiences with mental health challenges

and were concerned to strengthen the availability of both emergency and ongoing support

for individuals or families with a mental health crisis. And I was there for that as well

as recognizing that so many people interpreted the use of violence as a mental health concern,

and very rarely in the research do we find that persons who use violence have a true

mental health diagnosis. It’s a very small percentage of people who are suffering from an

illness, the vast majority are making a conscious choice to engage in behavior that works for them,

and so I wanted to help educate the mental health community and be better educated by them

to differentiate the use of violence from mental health concerns. And then, when mental health

concerns contribute, how do we deal with that more effectively? Because there's a crossover

between domestic violence, mental health and substance abuse, you're going to see a lot of

times that people who are using violence are using substances, but it doesn't mean

that the violence is caused by the substance or vice versa. You gotta separate it out and figure

it out, so they can all be present. So, I loved working with people who

had family members with mental health diagnoses, who had struggled to figure out how to get

them the help they needed and to work with the professionals there. I remember Mildred Vuris was

just an amazing woman that was the primary leader of trying to strengthen mental health

services in Travis County, and she taught me a lot about how you can work with people with respect

and attention to their needs, without separating them from accountability for their choices

because you still have to be responsible for what you chose to do,

even if you're struggling in some way. I hope that makes sense.

GARRETT: It does. Do you have questions, Ciera?

FARMER: No, I think you asked pretty much everything.

GARRETT: Why don't you tell us, just maybe a couple of big moments in your career that

you think are especially important that we haven't yet discussed, maybe moments that

influenced your career or that represent moments that changed how you thought about things.

TUCKER: Well, I know that one thing that made a huge difference is that the Texas Council on

Family Violence was really faltering after we had started up the office with Levi Strauss funding.

We weren't sure if we could sustain it and the Foundation for Improvement of Justice

in Atlanta ended up giving us an award that also included a $10,000 check that came at

just the moment that we were thinking, Are we going to be able to keep doing this. And oh,

what was the Houston— gosh, what's the Houston law school award named?

GARRETT: Let’s see. Ator Legal Improvement Award?

TUCKER: Yeah, yeah. And that, what year was that?

GARRETT: 1991.

TUCKER: Oh, well, later on. But that was a similar moment where you realize that people are stepping

up to keep your forward momentum. I think there were a lot of moments where I was encouraged.

There were a lot of moments where I was confused and overwhelmed and didn't really know how to

maneuver. And I was very fortunate to have some good sounding boards and people that I could sort

of lay it out to, that I didn't know what to do. And one of those grew up to become Senator Juan

Hinojosa. He was part of starting the shelter in McAllen, Texas, and he was a house member and then

he was this— became a senator and I really always thought of him as someone that I could talk to

and say, “this is going on, what do you think,” because he had a community I have—

has an amazing legal mind and he had a political analysis that that helped me a lot.

Of course, I already mentioned Ann Richards was pivotal, but another person that I dearly loved

and who pushed me a lot was Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock. He made sure that I

worked hard and understood what I needed to know and would challenge me constantly

to find the right information. Do the research, be prepared, don't go in half-cocked,

know what you want to accomplish. I mean, he taught me many things that were

a part of what I built into my day-to-day approach to things.

So, I think I had some excellent mentors along the way. I had some wonderful friends who

stood up with me at various points and helped me to get over humps and issues.

And there were a lot of us who were growing at the same time, who were influencing each other,

and I think all of those things were important. I saw that Susan Post, who runs Book Woman,

was in the collection, and Susan is an amazing person who came to every single conference and

workshop we ever did to sell her books and to talk with people about the information that

was available to us now from other people's work and learning. Because there's nothing new

under the sun. I mean we can all learn from each other and take what's going on that's creative

and see how it applies, so the people that I consider invaluable to helping me keep growing.

GARRETT:

Thank you, Debby. Are there any other things you'd like to discuss before we stop this recording?

TUCKER: Well, give me a moment to think.

GARRETT: Sure.

TUCKER: I mentioned that a lot of things that are now have their origins way back then and

grew from the beginning. And one of those that, you know, I did grow up in an air force family

and was very attentive when we started the rape crisis center and and later the

Austin Center for Battered Women to the fact that domestic and sexual violence

are issues within the military families and community as well. And we had several

dramatic, sort of, times that we worked on things with Bergstrom Air Force Base

that's now closed, is where our airport is now. But there was an air force base there and we were

also working with many of the entities in San Antonio a lot of times where there are several

military installations. And so all of those activities of looking at it local and then slowly

beginning to look at it state level as well really informed the fact that I was prepared later to

cochair the Department of Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence and to spend three years working

with— there were twelve of us who were civilians, twelve who were military leaders, and then twelve

military staff assigned to work with us. And to cochair that and to examine the military's

response to domestic violence and a tiny bit to sexual violence, because that wasn't part

of our charge, but we couldn't help ourselves, we wanted to raise some of those issues too,

really opened up a lot of conversation and change and policy analysis that is still

ongoing and is still a huge struggle for the military community, as it is for every culture.

There is no place on the planet yet that can claim that they have ended this use of violence.

And, you know, I love Star Trek, and I think part of that is because there's an emphasis

in Star Trek of trying to figure out how we all work together and respect each other across

planets and cultures and all of that, because sometimes it feels like we're on different planets

while we're all here on Earth. And our ability to see things from different perspectives

is a constant struggle in order to create unity and to create

safety and respect and all the things that we need to live in harmony.

And I don't know how I got to that, but it just came out. (laughter)

GARRETT: It came out well. Thank you for your time, Debby.

TUCKER: Oh well, thank y’all very much. I appreciate the opportunity to visit with you.

I hope that whoever listens down the road will feel like all you have to do is keep at it

and keep finding people who, from whom, you can learn and who will support you in creating the

changes that are needed, because they're out there and even sometimes the ones that are the most

difficult turn out to be the people that you learn the most from, and so I always remember that.

Folks that I was, I'd have to force myself to go and speak to them again, I would learn

later Gosh that's the person that really made me realize a whole lot more, so don't avoid

the ones that are ornery and challenging because they may help you grow the most.

GARRETT: Thank you.

End of Interview

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