Alice Tooker

Alice Rutherford Tooker, a well-known local artist who called Santa Barbara home for the last 29 of her 103 years, passed away peacefully on June 23 at The Samarkand Retirement Community in Santa Barbara. She was born in Kuling, China, in 1913 to Presbyterian medical missionaries Drs. Frederick and Mary Tooker. Alice graduated from Wooster College in Ohio in 1935 and subsequently earned her R.N. degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Alice spent the next thirty years traveling the globe with the faith-based Moral Re-Armament (MRA), which worked to improve human relations. She became deeply involved in MRA's musical and dramatic productions acting on stage, and as a stage manager, in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the United States. She later traveled as a nurse with the young casts of Up With People.

In 1969 Alice retired to Pasadena where she became a school nurse, and in 1988 she and her sister Delmer Tooker took up residence at the Samarkand in Santa Barbara. Throughout, she read for Recordings for the Blind for 30 years. In Santa Barbara, she served as a reading tutor at the Adams School, sang in the choir at the First Presbyterian Church, volunteered at the Health Center at The Samarkand, and was known for many enjoyable games of bridge.

In retirement she resumed her early love of art, taking classes with art master Sergei Bongart and other artists. Her paintings were regularly exhibited both in Pasadena, where she helped establish and manage one of the finest annual art shows in Southern California, and in Santa Barbara. She joined the Santa Barbara Art Association and consistently displayed her work at their Gallery 113. She continued to exhibit at The Samarkand and to paint right up to the week of her death.

Alice is survived by nine beloved nieces and nephews: John Whittlesey of Santa Barbara, Jean Whittlesey of Oakland, Mary Kay Dodds and Audrey Whittlesey of Massachusetts, David Tooker and Lynn Jones of Nebraska, Susan Setzler of Virginia, Peter Tooker of Arkansas, and David Whittlesey of Connecticut; her 16 great- and great-great nieces and nephews; and a large extended family.

A service will be held at the Samarkand Retirement Community, 2550 Treasure Drive, Santa Barbara, on Saturday, July 1, at 2:30 p.m. We will celebrate Alice's remarkable life as an artist, actress, nurse, central family figure, friend, and warm spirit who practiced her faith in her daily life. She was greatly loved and will be greatly missed in all the circles to which she gave so much.

Contributions in Alice's name can be made to the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission.

Arrangements entrusted to McDermott-Crockett Mortuary.