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Died November 16, 2020.
Hoover High School, Hoover, AL
Custodian
After Hoover High School custodian Charles Tucker died last month of COVID-19, teachers, staff and students rallied to raise money for his family.
“This is just a tragedy we never thought would happen,” said his widow, Naretta Johnson-Tucker, who was married to him for five years. “He was a loving guy, had a smile on his face. He could light up the room.”
Staff at Hoover High School started a Go Fund Me account that has raised more than $7,600 of its $10,000 goal. Tucker, who was 42, died on Nov. 16.
“Before he left us he was our friendly and smiling (even behind the mask) custodian,” they wrote in the appeal. He was survived by his wife, a son, 19, and two daughters, they noted. “As a school and community we have decided to gather and help support his family.”
Johnson-Tucker said she was moved by the effort.
“Charles has had so much love from the people he worked with,” she said. “He worked at the school only a year. He had touched so many people. Everybody at the school wanted to do something for him.”
Johnson-Tucker said her husband’s death will profoundly affect her daughter, Shanyiah, 10, a fourth-grader at Glen Iris Elementary School.
“He helped raise my daughter,” Johnson-Tucker said. “He raised her just like she was his own, dropping her off at school, picking her up. He took her to the father-daughter dance. When she was Miss Second Grade, he was there with her. He went to Christmas programs. He played a vital role in her life.”
Tucker received a kidney transplant six years ago at UAB Hospital. “He was doing real good with it,” Johnson-Tucker said.
On Oct. 20, he visited a doctor and tested positive for COVID-19. On Oct. 27, he was admitted to the intensive care unit at UAB Hospital.
“He was doing good,” Johnson-Tucker said. “He made it to a regular floor, then his breathing declined.”
Tucker needed dialysis and his immune system was compromised, she said. He also developed bacterial pneumonia, she said.
“His body just wasn’t responding well,” she said. “He was on a ventilator. They did everything they could for him.”
Even as he lay dying, he remained upbeat, she said. “He was reaching out to everybody,” she said. “He was still in good spirits. He was checking on me and my daughter.”
Johnson-Tucker said she also tested positive for COVID-19 more than three weeks ago and has been struggling to recover.
“I’m still having problems, chest pains,” she said.
She works as a medical assistant at UAB Hospital in the obstetrics department.
“I’ve been blessed so many ways,” she said. “Everybody has really come together and supported me and my daughter. I have a great community.”
Now she faces life as a single mother, after COVID, clinging to memories.
“It’s something you never had yourself prepared for,” she said. “I’m so glad he has this love coming from all directions.”