Park to be Named in Honor of Ruby Tucker

The half-acre park located at 3500 Jefferson Davis Highway will be named after Ruby Tucker, the tireless “Queen of Lynhaven.”

The Alexandria City Council unanimously voted to name the park in honor of the community activist, who passed away in 2009.

Husband Eugene Tucker and several friends spoke at the hearing at City Hall on Saturday before council members shared their own memories.

“She was the heart and soul of this city,” Mayor Bill Euille said. “She was a community leader for so many causes. This will allow her memory to live forever. It will be a place for her family to sit and reflect. … It’s the right thing to do.”

Tucker served Alexandria’s Redevelopment and Housing Authority for 12 years, worked as director of ALIVE Child Development Center and was the elections chief at Cora Kelly for several decades. She was also a founding member of First Agape Baptist Church in Del Ray.

Councilwoman Del Pepper, who met Tucker in the 1990s, said the list of her services “just keeps going.”

“She was the president of three PTAs… For 10 years she was head of the T.C. Williams athletic boosters,” Pepper said. “For two decades she served in the Lynhaven Civic Association.”

It was in Lynhaven where Tucker’s grassroots work began in the 1970s. She organized a small group of citizens to work with police to combat open-air drug trade and prostitution in the neighborhood. She confronted this issue and many others in Lynhaven throughout the years, all while caring for her own two children as well as more than a dozen foster children.

A family resource center in Old Town was named after Tucker in 2009. The Lynhaven Citizens Association sent a letter to the city requesting the naming of the park in her honor last year. In October, the city sought public comment on the proposed name.

Longtime Del Ray resident Judy Lowe sent in the following remarks:

“I knew Ruby well and loved her just as much as anyone in the neighborhood. I cannot think of anyone who gave more to the City of Alexandria than she did. She served long, hard and conscientious for the people of the city that needed her. I think this honor of naming the park for her is absolutely perfect.”