Dixie
It’s odd enough that the Tucker brothers, Dixie and Charles, were both born in 1893 — one of them in April, the other in December — but odder still is that neither was named after his distinguished father, Dr. William Medwin Tucker.
Ohio-born, and the son of German immigrants, Dr. Tucker had a medical practice in Flatonia, Texas, in 1900. He served as a captain in the U.S. medical reserve corps from 1917–1920; afterwards, he was superintendent of a Methodist hospital in Monterrey, Mexico…and a surgeon for a mining company.
Of course, the Tucker boys also had an exceptional mother. The daughter of a Kentucky farmer, Mrs. Tucker was a trained physician and, according to her husband’s obituary, practiced medicine with him early in their marriage. While living in Flatonia, the two supported the charitable Epworth League, seeing to it that the needy received medical treatment and nursing care.
In 1905, the family moved from Texas to Sulphur, Oklahoma, where Dr. Tucker established a general practice. Mrs. Tucker went to work for the extension service at Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College (now Oklahoma State University). In 1915, she was named supervisor of Oklahoma’s rural hygiene and sanitation efforts, traveling the state to educate families about (for example) the danger of ignoring fly bites on children.
And, of course, she was a mother. Like many women with their own careers, she identified herself by using both her maiden name and her married name. She was Dixie Bohon Tucker, and that was the name she and her husband chose to give their first-born son. Second-born Charles Medwin Tucker shared his father’s middle and last names.
It is the male Dixie Bohon Tucker — his name is often styled “D.B. Tucker” in documents — whose life path inspired this examination of the Tucker family. He was the Tucker with the closest ties to Texas, particularly to Dallas. Since his death in 1918, he has lain in a plot purchased by his father, in the city’s historic Oakland Cemetery. No family members flank him.
Dixie left his family behind in Oklahoma when he made his way to Dallas. In 1914, he found work as a clerk in the auditing office for the MK&T (Missouri-Kansas-Texas) Railway. He was still there in 1916, living at 218 Ross Avenue. In June 1917, two months after the United States declared war on Germany, he joined up.
All three Tucker men served in the military: Dr. Tucker was commanding officer of the El Paso Infirmary during the war; Charles was a sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps (1919–1920). Unlike Dixie, they survived their stints as soldiers.
Dixie left Dallas sometime in 1917 for Camp Travis, a divisional training camp near San Antonio; there, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. Among other duties, he was put in charge of transporting soldiers from one camp to another. He left Camp Travis for Fort Sill (Oklahoma) to study radio-wireless and aviation.
Once he “won his wings” as an artillery observer, Dixie moved on to Mount Clemens, Michigan, home of the military airfield known as Selfridge Field, for a three-week preparation to serve overseas. In his second week there, he made an unfortunate excursion.
On a free Sunday in early October, he and a buddy, Second Lt. John W. Quarles,* left Selfridge Field and paddled a canoe out on Lake St. Clair to explore the marshes along the shore. There was a stiff wind that afternoon, and the lake was high. By nightfall, the two men had been reported missing, and a search began.
At 8 a.m. Monday, their canoe was found, empty, presumably swamped. Planes and boats immediately were deployed to search for the men, but there was no quick resolution. It was mid-November before an Oklahoma newspaper reported that their bodies had been “recently recovered.”
Dixie’s death certificate attributes his end to an “accidental drowning in an overturned canoe.” He was 25 years old.
Second Lt. Dixie Bohon Tucker did not die in combat. Unlike his father and brother, he does not lie for eternity in a national cemetery. Nor does he lie among ancestors in a family cemetery. He rests among thousands of strangers off Malcolm X Boulevard in a city of more than a million souls.
It’s not clear why Oakland Cemetery became Dixie’s final home. His family of three all lived in California; he was the first of them to die. Had he closer ties to the city than records show? Whose decision was it to bury him here?
What matters, however, is that Dixie did get an honorable send-off. An Oklahoma newspaper reported November 16, 1918 that the aviators at Mount Clemens, Michigan gave Second Lt. Tucker a military funeral. The story suggested that he was well-liked among his peers.
Furthermore, it was reported in his mother’s hometown newspaper, The Harrodsburg (KY) Herald, that the entire class “wanted to escort the remains to Dallas at their own expense and would have been permitted to do so had it not been for the flu quarantine.”
The story concluded that it was expected that the citizens of Flatonia, Texas would change the name of its aviation field to Tucker Field in honor of “the popular young lieutenant.”
*[Newspaper reports of the drowning of Lt. John W. Quarles incorrectly spelled his name “Quarries.”]
