Way back in 1961, Harvey Tucker decided that he'd supplement his night job as a "gear-jammer" (truck driver) with a one-off gig at San Rafael's Congregation Rodef Sholom, washing dishes after a temple Sisterhood coffee and cake soiree. As he was drying the last saucer, one of the synagogue's maintenance men begged out of work to go cash a check. He never came back.

Harvey, however, took the opposite tack. He never left.

Harvey's hair is snow white now, and, combined with the bright light filtering through Rodef Sholom's windows last week on a rainy Marin morning, it gave him something of a beatific look when I sat down with him. The 72-year-old saw me coming, smiled and pulled aside a couple of the chairs he was setting up for perhaps his 2,300th Shabbat.

When John F. Kennedy was shot, Harvey was stepping out of his car to start the workday. When Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, he was stepping into his car after finishing the workday. And when the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck, he was, once again, walking up Rodef Sholom's front steps.

"I thought it was one of the cement trucks that was always coming and going when they were building the place next door. Then I looked up and saw everything moving, so I knew it wasn't any truck. I took a detour back into the parking lot."

Now, after 46 years and God knows how many attempts by Hebrew school kids to steal his retractable keychain (with the 17 keys he doesn't even have to look at to sort), Harvey is retiring.

He grew up in Monroe, La., in a Baptist home — but after a lifetime in a synagogue, he now laughs and says that "one religion is as good as another." He's been to virtually every Friday and Saturday service since Pat Brown was governor, and he can tell when Hebrew speakers trip on their words. In fact, his advice to bar and bat mitzvah students is always the same: "If you make a mistake, just keep going because only the Hebrew speakers will know." Of course, Harvey will know too. But he'd never give you a hard time about it when you slipped into the synagogue kitchen afterward to watch TV with him.

Harvey is getting older. The children of Rodef Sholom have stayed the same age. Their names have changed through the years — as have the names he gives them. For many years, "Little Smurf" was his favorite nickname, though the synagogue's truly fortunate — or unfortunate — young people could earn names of their own.

"There was one young man I recall who was chasing a basketball. And, you see that pole there? He ran right into it, headfirst. Set him back six feet," said Harvey.

"Well, he got up, shook his head and took right off after that ball. I named him Iron Head. You don't want to butt heads with him."

Many a child who climbed the roof in search of a lost kickball — a no-no since everyone liked Ike — was shocked to be greeted on the roof by Harvey, ball in hand. His standard warning: "If you fall off the roof and break the concrete, I will bury you there."

"You know," Harvey said, a wistful look in his watery brown eyes, "things have changed. The things I yelled at the kids in the '60s, '70s and '80s, you just can't do that anymore."

Still, nothing makes him happier than tossing out a bagful of balls so "the kids can play out there all day long, and I can yell at them all day long."

Harvey still hopes to put in a few hours a week at Rodef Sholom after his retirement — and the huge sendoff party that the synagogue is planning — next month. But this is definitely the end of an era. Sooner or later, he'll walk over the tile he laid, past the pews he built and through the doors he installed for the last time.

"This is my family. This is my house. And don't pick on them. When you do, you're picking on me."




Joe Eskenazi was born in San Francisco. He's still there. Reach him at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).