ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — When it comes to women making history, for one family, all they have to do is look at the children in their neighborhood to see it.

That’s because a St. Pete woman born in 1918 dedicated her life to making sure children in the Tampa Bay area had access to quality childcare. And now, her legacy is living on through her great-granddaughter and the families she served.

What You Need To Know

  • Making sure her classroom is ready with the right amount of educational décor is important. But for Tricina Rucker, it’s not the main thing

  • Her passion was instilled in her by her hero, her great-grandmother, Pauline Russell

  • MORE: Women's History Month stories

Making sure her classroom is ready with the right amount of educational décor is important. But for Tricina Rucker, it’s not the main thing.

“It’s rewarding. You get to invest in the children, and you get to see your investment,” Rucker said.

For her, this is personal.

“I was raised in the childcare environment,” she said. “But it became a passion.”

It’s a passion instilled in her by her hero, her great-grandmother, Pauline Russell.

“This is my great-grandmother. My father’s father's mother. And she raised me from birth,” she said.

Her great-grandmother led by example.

“She opened up the New Hope Daycare with Reverand J. L. Fennel who was the pastor at that time in 1977, the year that I was born,” she said.

When her grandmother helped open another preschool in Lakeland, Rucker was old enough to see the process and be inspired by it — especially after learning more about Russell’s early life.

“She couldn’t read,” she said. “She was born in 1918 in Lanier County, Ga., and she could not go to school. She had to work in the fields.”

She said her grandmother didn’t let that get in the way of opening daycare centers and becoming a realtor.

“She again couldn’t read but she kept taking that real estate test and kept taking it and failing it, but she didn’t stop,” she said. “She kept going until she passed it and she became a licensed realtor and helped a lot of the Black families in South St. Petersburg become homeowners.”

Russell accomplished a lot in her 95 years, but there is one thing Rucker said she wishes she would have been able to see.

“I went and got my child development associate’s degree as well as my director’s credentials. The director’s credentials for me were big because she didn’t have that,” she said.

It’s an accomplishment she happily shares with her late great-grandmother. It’s an accomplishment that will benefit her along with the children and families in St. Petersburg, just as her great-grandmother had hoped.