The Bowie community lost one of its most well-known graduates with the passing of Temple Tucker on Dec. 7.
Tucker moved to Bowie in junior high after first living in Mercedes and Corpus Christi. He cut an impressive first impression for his classmates as even back then he was on his way to standing 6 feet 10 inches.
“He was tall,” echoed classmates Gail White and Ben Hill.
At first his height seemed to hinder him more than help on the basketball court as he is described as tripping over himself.
“He couldn’t chew gum and walk down the street at the same time,” White said.
It took good tutoring, first from principal Paul Tover and then Coach Raymond Mattingly to turn Tucker into one of the best basketball players in the state.
Tucker graduated in 1954 and has the distinction of being possibly the most accomplished athlete in program history, no matter the sport. He was a part of four straight state championship basketball teams, where he featured as the team’s center down low back when post play ruled the sport. He was named to the all-state team his last three years.
Playing in an era where more than 10 of his teammates went on to play college basketball and coached by Raymond Mattingly, who was inducted into the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame and was a member of the Texas High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor, Tucker was far from a one-man show.
His last two seasons saw Bowie go on a 69 game winning streak, only snapped the year after Tucker and his teammates graduated.
He then went to Rice University and played for the Owls. Freshman were not allowed to play back then so when he starred as a sophomore he averaged 22.1 points and 12.7 rebounds and was a third team All-American selection and a second team all-southwest conference selection.
As a junior, he averaged 15.1 points and 10.5 rebounds while earning second team All-SWC again. His senior year he averaged 13.5 points and 8.8 rebounds while being picked as Rice’s most valuable player.
He was later inducted into the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Honor, the Rice University Athletics Hall of Fame and the Bowie High School Hall of Honor.
Tucker then was drafted in the fourth round of the NBA draft by the Philadelphia Warriors. Instead of pursuing professional sports, which were much less lucrative than they are now, he decided to use his bachelor of arts degree in economics to work for Northwestern National Life Insurances as a financial advisor. He lived in the Houston area and was living in Cypress with his wife of 41 years, Anita, when he passed. He was previously married to Doris Neville.
“He was my gentle my giant,” Anita said. “Everyone knew that is what I called him.”
Described as a humble person, many of his family and friends only learned later from other people and from discovering packed up trophies in boxes the extent of Tucker’s athletic achievements.
He had five children: Kevin, Brian, Carol, Rick and Marva. His oldest, Kevin, described Tucker as the stereotypical Christian-centered father growing up.
“If you had to define a father, he was a great traditional father that grew up in a Christian household,” Kevin said. “Taught us about the great outdoors, sports and how to live life.”
Kevin said the seeds for his faith were planted throughout his life by his dad. When he eventually came to embrace it while in college, his father was there ready to forgive him.
A big part of Tucker’s life was being apart of and then spending time as the president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Greater Houston chapter. His father was a minister and Tucker’s faith was a big part of his life even as a teenager says his classmates.
“I never heard anyone say a derogatory word about Temple Tucker,” 1954 senior class president Gail White said. “He didn’t run around with the guys, but he was always with us when we were in a big group.”
“He was the best of us,” Ben Hill said.
The only time Hill, his teammate and the last surviving starting five member from the 1954 team, said he heard Tucker swear was a funny story.
Several of the key basketball players failed to hide from Coach Mattingly in the gym during track practice and were forced to run the 4×440 yard relay against the varsity track team.
“Temple was running the first leg and I was running the second,” Hill said. “The race started and old Temple come around the first curve. It’s a gravel track and he has on tennis shoes. He dropped the baton and when he turned around to get it he fell down in the gravel. Of course I was just on the ground laughing. He got up and got his baton and he wanted me to keep running. He said run, you SOB, run.”
It was one of several stories the two shared in their last phone call earlier this year.

To read the full story, pick up a copy of the weekend edition of the Bowie News.