Without the exceptional teachers in my life The Hard Bargain would not have been written. I was privileged to be exposed to some of the most brilliant, academic minds that shaped my career path. But, also, I was lucky to be a son of Richard Tucker who taught me some of the most valuable life lessons.
There were four individuals who stood above all the rest. The first was Ms. Grace Warner, my elementary school teacher in Great Neck, Long Island, who took a troubled young boy and instilled the gift of learning. She set a compass that stayed with me throughout my life. The second teacher was Dr. John McLean, Chief of the Department of Ophthalmology at Cornell Medical School, who ironically was a big fan of mine when I sang at numerous Cornell dinner parties. Although he was enthusiastic about my vocal talent, he would be the one who influenced my decision to become an ophthalmologist. Then there was Dr. Edward Norton, Professor and Chairman of the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute in Miami, Florida. He set the highest bar for me for excellence and ethics in the practice of ophthalmology with my patients.
I dedicated my memoir, The Hard Bargain, to my father who was my greatest mentor of all. What I thought was parental indifference as a young man, I now recognize as my dad's type of tough love that turned out to be , for me, parental wisdom.
Stay tuned to hear more from me, and visit my homepage: www.thehardbargainbook.com.
Dr. David Tucker
Second Blog for The Hard Bargain - A young boy in Brooklyn
Growing up in Brooklyn with the old Dodger baseball team at Ebbets Field was so exciting and such a great part of my early childhood. It Was Personal!
We lived and breathed baseball, even though our ball field and diamond was paved in concrete and had two-way traffic at inconvenient times. In our version of the game the sewers on the streets were the boundaries and the curbs were the bases. Our comparable game was either stick-ball or punch-ball. We slept with our well oiled and folded baseball gloves under the pillows every evening, and dreamt of being a Dodger hero. To me and many Brooklynites the Civil Rights Movement started with second baseman, Jackie Robinson,, in the late 1940's , long before our Government finally passed that landmark law in 1964.
During my early youth in Brooklyn I was quite pugnacious and constantly getting into trouble. I was expelled from parochial school { Yeshiva } for hitting a teacher, frequently got into fist fights with other children, and the police often would visit our home apartment to render complaints about my behavior to my father. To say the least it was an odd beginning for anyone to eventually become a well respected and responsible physician.
Stay tuned for more on The Hard Bargain.
The Hard Bargain Story -- Introduction
My journey to become a physician was initially directed by my father. Unwittingly, as a young man I never realized until now that parental indifference turned out to be parental wisdom. My story is a complicated but universal father -son saga. What was special in this narrative was that my dad, Richard Tucker, was an iconic figure and legendary operatic tenor. My ambition was to follow him onto the opera stage, but his vision for me was to become a doctor. Growing up with this powerful man was not easy and at times humiliating. Our clash of wills was both frustrating and hilarious. This odyssey of music and medicine was played out on various stages around the world, but finally the last act revealed my true destiny.
In my formative years, my family lived modestly in Brooklyn, New York where my father held the esteemed position of cantor at the Brooklyn Jewish Center and where Rabbi Israel Leventhal was its renowned spiritual leader. However, once my father joined the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1945 as a leading tenor and became an international superstar, our lives dramatically changed. It was CAMELOT! Going to the Met and watching my father perform, multiple television appearances, traveling abroad to many countries, illustrious guests at our dinner table, and visiting the White House. My dad sang for five American Presidents.
So, was it unreasonable for me then to believe that I could follow in his footsteps?
STAY tuned to hear more about my memoir, The Hard Bargain {www.thehardbargainbook.com}.