Bull Remembered

Sarah Long, director of the North Suburban Library System, wrote to me and said:

Was just reading the Bull Remembered site and am so touched by all the stories.  What a guy!  All the stories are amazingly consistent. We typically don’t sum up people’s lives when they are walking around but I wonder if most people are remembered by so many with such a clear, loving and accurate eye.  I think not. He was one in a million.

I wrote a column in the Daily Herald about Mr. Bullen.  I will print it below.  Please might you add it to the other contributions.

With his years of experience, he served as my guide to the rather complex Illinois library scene. His wife, Ida Bullen, was the assistant director at the neighboring DuPage Library System.

Both taught library science courses in many venues and had worked as consultants on a variety of library projects. Their two children, Anne and Andrew, had become librarians.

In summary, they were a considerable force in Illinois libraries. They knew everything and everybody, and how and why things were as they were.

But to say that Mr. Bullen, as I always called him, served as a knowledgeable and trusted guide, minimizes our relationship. Significantly, we were both born in the South: he in Mississippi and I in Georgia. I had not lived in the South for many years, and had forgotten Southern expressions, sensibilities and that peculiar Southern view of the world. Working with him on a daily basis was a delightful reconnection with my past.

Mr. Bullen was always a courtly gentleman and he knew how to use his good manners and geniality to smooth the way. For example, after I was on the job, he told me it was obvious at my interview that I was the winning candidate.

He said, “Sarah, you remember I followed you out into the parking lot to talk with you after the interview. You were the best. I didn’t follow anyone else out into the parking lot.”

This little bit of soft flattery was so sweet. Don’t we all need as much affirmation as we can get?

I had moved to Illinois from Portland, Ore., where beautiful Mt. Hood is visible if it’s a clear day. On one occasion in those early days at NSLS, there was some sort of crisis and I was upset and anxious.

Trying to calm me, Mr. Bullen said, “Now Sarah, just look out the window. In a little while the clouds will clear and you will see beautiful Mt. Hood right over there. The sun will shine and everything will be all right.”

This optimism and gentle concern for my distress was so personally helpful to me in those early days.

Mr. Bullen and Ida held on to the mores of the South, today truly gone with the wind. A reception in my honor when I arrived at NSLS featured the Bullens’ silver serving trays, cut glass, and starched and ironed linens. Later, I was invited for a meal at the Bullen home and was treated to authentic Cajun gumbo and a dessert featuring peeled and sugared grapes.

As the assistant director, Mr. Bullen had many jobs and responsibilities. He especially relished “placing” people, as he called it. If you were a librarian who had been in a class taught either by Ida or himself, he felt an obligation to make sure you had a good job.

Even if you were not a former student, you could appeal to Mr. Bullen to “place” you. He would call up his many friends in high places and promote your talents. He also encouraged librarians to apply for higher jobs. He served as a sort of shaman, directing the grand scheme of librarianship in this part of the world.

Mr. Bullen died last month and I will miss him terribly. He was one of a kind and, in many ways, his passing symbolizes the end of an era. Read his obituary, as well as other reminiscences of this larger-than-life Southern gentleman.

Sarah Long

I only ever saw my father cry twice.  Once was when he had to tell me that my cat Harold had died.  The other time was when Mom died.  He was such a dear soul; he was very clear on how to connect to the things we love, and how to leave the rest behind.

I was so saddened to learn of the passing of Robert Bullen. What a fine and caring gentleman he was. He took me under his wing when I, a non-librarian, came to work at NSLS in 1980. He patiently explained how the System worked and decoded the acronyms for me. But more than that we shared so many wonderful conversations about life outside the library world–about our families and about royal families, about places and people in the South, about our views of the Civil War–and on and on.  Still he always had time to help me sort out job-related problems, and I would go away feeling a little less stressed. He was so good at what he did and a gold mine of library and historical information. But most of all–a very good and supportive friend.

Catharine Cole  (Mrs. Carwithen to Robert)

I met Mr. Bullen, as I first called him, over ten years ago when we worked together on Sarah Long’s ALA Presidential campaign.  I don’t remember when I switched to calling him “Bull” like everybody else.  For his part, he never called me by name. “We don’t have that name in the South,” he’d say, preferring instead to spell out “I-A-N.” (Mississippi, his home state, remains the most Ian-less of the fifty.)

Bull split his volunteer time between calling his old library contacts and the menial tasks of stuffing and addressing envelopes.  He didn’t mind doing either one: “I don’t give a hoot,” as he put it. Socially, he had the unique talent of, with complete impunity, broaching topics many others wouldn’t be able to touch.  At one point, I heard him ask a phone call recipient, “Is it Miss or Mrs.?” Afterwards, I told him, “You know, you probably shouldn’t ask  her that.”He frowned and said, “Boy! How else would I know how to address the envelope?”

That sudden burst of playful, feigned anger was one of his trademarks.  So, too, were the word variations.  Not a “sticker” but a “sticky.”  Not “candy” but “a bit of sweet.”  I wish I could remember all of them.  Some of them may have been regional but I have a feeling the majority were just Bull being Bull.  His words would sometimes lilt about when he’d say them: a “cute” girl came out as being “cah-yute.”

I figured at one point that he knew everyone who’d ever worked in a library anywhere in the country.  When we’d stuff envelopes, he’d have stories about each addressee–sometimes ones that probably wouldn’t be part of their Library Journal profiles.  I asked him a lot about Vicksburg and the Natchez Trace and about the writers he’d met.  He’d met them all, at least the southern ones: Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and the ultra-cool Flannery O’Connor, who, Bull picked up at the bus station for a library reading and was quite surprised to find in her housecoat.

A life in libraries is well-spent.  Bull served an important part in creating the library service in parts of the north Chicago suburbs that are still enjoyed today, including what became the Ela Area, Warren-Newport, and Vernon Area libraries.  That’s not nothing.  Or as he would say, it’s a credit to him.  He’d always say that, “Be a credit to me”, before he ended each phone call.  This after reminding me that his blue suit was waiting in his closet for my wedding day.  (When I did get married, he wore gray, but never mind.)  Then before hanging up, he’d say, “Call me day or night.”

FROM: William McCully
Prospect Heights Public Library

Along with Robert McClarren and RoseMarie Jostock, Bob Bullen provided me with a warm welcome as a new NSLS Director in 1982.  Each time I saw him, Bull would inquire courteously about the welfare of my family and my library, often offering words of encouragement along with frequently hilarious anecdotes.  He gave an aura of human interest, concern, and encouragement which are uncommon in life today.  He was most proud of his own family and never failed to mention that he always encouraged his children to “get into State Library work whenever possible.” (It appears that they listened!)  Although it was always somewhat surprising to find such a genuine “southern gentleman” in the North Suburban LS, his grace and sense of humor always made the days go better.  Even after his own retirement, he returned frequently to celebrate the retirement of colleagues.  His passing leaves a real “humanitarian gap” in our State’s library community, and he will be missed by many who enjoyed his warmth and encouragement.

FROM: Linda Zeilstra Sawyer

Youth Services Programming Coordinator

Skokie Public Library

I had the privilege of having Mr. Bullen as my instructor for quite a few courses when I was in the LTA program offered by the College of DuPage but held at the Mount Prospect Library. Mr.  Bullen was the consummate gentleman. He was passionate about libraries and librarianship. He became a mentor of mine encouraging me to pursue my M.L.S. which I did. A few years ago I saw Mr. Bullen at ILA. He was wheelchair-bound but that limitation hadn’t dampened his enthusiasm to be amongst his colleagues and talking about libraries. He greeted me with a warm hug and his trademark smile. I will hold that memory close to me. Though we will no longer see him at conferences he has rejoined his beloved wife and they are together and in peace but his spirit will live on with all of us who had the honor of learning from him.

When I was only 5 or 6, my father took me to the edge of the Lockheed testing grounds in Marietta, GA, where we lived at the time. I remember watching the first test flights of the C-5A Galaxy, then the largest plane in the world.  I remember it clawing its way into the air, and how it filled the sky (it flew directly over us). The roar of its engines was deafining.

I can still remember this after 43 years.  This is the moment I developed my lifelong love of airplanes.

I was in Italy, in Florence, specifically, when the planes struck the towers. It took us several days to get an outside line in all of the chaos and fear. I remember finally figuring out how the Italian phone cards work and FINALLY getting an outside line and finally figuring out how to dial the U.S. My father answered, calm and collected. He was very calm, and was a tremendous source of peace at that awful time.

I will miss most, I think, calling my father and talking to him. I always enjoyed calling him. Before he became deaf, he and I used to talk daily.