Fired at 57: Table of Contents

Fired at Fifty-seven:

My Fight for Justice in Christian Academia

Ruth A. Tucker

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface: “The Mysterious Case of Prof. Tucker”

Introduction: Unsealing the Environment

Does Anyone Have to Know: Shaming and Self-doubt

The Smoking Gun: An Academic Dean’s Dishonest Evaluation

Gender Tenured: Sex Discrimination in Plain Sight

Slandered and Sidelined: Renewal for “Ungodly Conduct”

Hot flashes and Hardball: Gender Differences Disregarded

Surveillance and Psychological Testing: More than Paranoia

Academic Mobbing: Colleagues Joining the Posse

8. A Mothers’ Day Letter: Unbridled Anger Leading to Mediation

9. Hysterical Woman: 35 Minutes of “Incoherent Rage”

10. A Fired-up Aftermath: Going Public and Celebrating Freedom

Epilogue: A Final Word

Notes: A Short Explanation

Epilogue

As I write, it’s now nearly fifeen years since I’ve been away from the seminary. John and I still live in a flood plain on the Grand River seven miles north of Grand Rapids. We’ve weathered many floods, including the 100-year flood of 2013, giving us some celebrity when the front page of the Grand Rapids Press featured a photograph of the two of us kayaking down our road with water up to the mailboxes. We’ve come to love the River and the life it offers, but we no longer hoist our kayaks two at a time so easily as we head to the dozen steps down to the water. We feel our age. No more days of 50-mile biking, no more water-skiing. Even our hiking is curtailed. We still drive south in January to Big Bend National Park on the Rio Grande in Texas (except during a pandemic). But we no longer take a chance on the most rigorous trails.

John is now eighty, and I’m five years behind. We do, however, maintain our little shop, founded in 1996, a hobby too personal to give up. We have help from family members when we really need it, but on most days we’re there alone when customers wander in. It’s located on an acre of land just a block south of the Grand Rapids border, on a busy five-lane road. We do not advertise, fearing hordes of people, and we have no inclination to hire workers.

Guests comment that they’ve never seen such a delightful shop. I would say the same were I to happen on it by chance. Besides the house (as it once was) with its big wrap-around porch and other additions, there are twenty out-buildings, some very small but all open and containing product: Apple House, Percy’s shed, play house, Olde Junk Shoppe, Breton Cottage, red barn, cabin, coop, stable, bird house, Chapel by the Bridge, Mexico House, Wash House, Garden House, Up-north Barn, tiki hut, sign shop, statuary shed, Christmas House, potting shed, and outhouse—all displaying my iconic outdoor folk-art painted on various mediums, items that are often purchased but mainly copied with my compliments, as the signs say: “Snap a picture, Make your own.” Also onsite, gazebos, pergolas, vine structures, picnic tables, outdoor seating, ponds, waterfalls, woodland garden, gnome village, totem pole garden, a ten-foot windmill, butterfly arch, all joined by walkways and rock gardens. It’s a wonderfully enchanting place to spend our senior years. . . .

Fired at 57

Table of Contents

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