DoGooder: BLU MCMuLLin

Apr 1, 2014 | People

[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
Images: courtesty Blu McMullin”][/title]

Blu McMullin is the kind of neighbor you wish you had. When winter hit with a fury, he cut and split firewood for some of his neighbors. When snow fell, he rounded up some of the neighborhood kids and went sledding. When a nearby animal shelter reported their water buckets had frozen and then burst during a bitter cold spell, it was Blu who started calling around, quickly finding replacements.

The no-kill shelter is one of Blu’s favorite places on earth. “There are about thirty dogs there, and a different volunteer comes out every day to help,” Blu says. “I don’t do as much as they do. I just take the dogs for walks, try to teach them how to walk on a lead so that when people come out to look at them they can see they know how to walk, how to sit, how not to jump up on them. I’m pretty good at basic training. The fun part is when I can let a group of them run free. I lead them around like the Pied Piper. It’s a blast to see these dogs rumble and tumble with each other. I do such a small amount. It’s the other volunteers that I admire.”

This deflecting attention from himself is something Blu does throughout the interview. He pulls a list of names and phone numbers from a notebook and hands it over. These people, he says, are the real do-gooders, the kind of people worthy of having a story written about them. What he does is simply pay attention to what’s around him, to help when he can. But it’s in this paying attention that all the good work happens. He does not turn away when he sees a person in need, when he comes across an animal in need.

His love of animals started early, in the years when he grew up in Minnesota. He had horses then, kept at his grandparents’ place. He spent all the time he could there, learning their habits, dreaming of the day he’d become a horse trainer. And he did become a trainer, although he soon discovered that making a career of it was an extremely hard thing to do. But then he crossed paths with a gymnastics coach who trained Olympians, and everything in Blu’s life changed. The coach invited Blu to be part of his team, and soon he was helping train athletes such as Kathy Johnson, who was named to the Olympic team in 1980 but didn’t compete because the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Games that year. She returned to the Olympics in 1984 and won the bronze and silver for her team.

By the mid-1980s life changed again. Blu moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he met his wife, Jan, a schoolteacher, and eventually opened Flame Gymnastics. During those years, his dream of a horse ranch faded. But when he sold the business he started looking for a place on the outskirts of Fort Smith. That is where he lives today, on twenty-five acres, with a flock of forty chickens that follow him around and sometimes hop on his head for a bird’s eye view of the ranch. He has about a dozen horses, and a couple of barn cats, one of which he found during a bike ride. He heard the kitten mew, found it abandoned near the road, then picked it up and let the little bundle ride home on his shoulder.

Blu is so connected with these animals that he often finds himself knee-deep in the duck pond, moving turtles to another duck-free waterway so that they won’t eat his little feathered friends.

The animals make Blu’s world a happy place. “It’s very Zen-ish to have dogs and cats and chickens and ducks and horses and fish. You feed them and you look out there and everybody is happy. We’ve had rescue horses here that people brought to me because they didn’t have a place to keep them, and together we took care of them. My wife Jan says if she came back as a horse this is where she’d want to be.”

As Blu is talking, a big black dog trots by. “Wrangler was dropped off here in 2005. He was hit by a car, and paralyzed from the middle of his back down. He would drag himself around with his front feet.” Blu smiles, all that heartbreak and victory wrapped up in that one expression. “He’s just fine now,” he says. “Absolutely fine.”

Wrangler is just one of three rescue dogs that live on the farm. They run amongst the chickens, but never think of harming one. That too, is due to Blu’s diligent training, and it is an amazing thing to see, the dogs running through a huddle of chickens, the hens looking up, unimpressed and unafraid. Farther away a few of the horses are lying down in the field. Others stand nearby, watching. This is the way of horses, Blu says. They would never all lie down at once. They understand that there is a time for some of them to rest, and a time for the others to stand watch, making sure all is well.

Blu’s life seems to reflect this overseeing. “There are some ladies who don’t have husbands, who need things done, and I help them out. My wife kids me that I have six wives. I sometimes mow yards. I have a dump truck and I can level out yards, things like that. Nothing extraordinary.”

Listing what he does seems to be incredibly difficult for Blu. He stops often, he backtracks, and he gives up a story of a good deed and then decides he doesn’t want it told. And finally, he says, “There’s an old saying that says, ‘The meaning of life is to find your gift, and the purpose of life is to give it away.’ It ruins the whole thing if it’s all heralded. It’s the anonymity that brings the real pleasure, when you’re the only one who knows. Part of being spiritual is not just helping other people, but helping them without recognition. There are thousands of people out there doing good things. Someone helping an older woman who can stay in her house and not go to a nursing home because someone is helping with her yard. I know a person around here who uses their own car to take people to doctor’s appointments.”

While he is saying this, a flock of hens ambles by. A rooster crows, stops, crows again. Wrangler lounges under a tree in the sun. The horses that were lying down rise now, and the other horses take their places. Some rest and the others watch over them. And at that moment all the world seems exactly the way it ought to be.

Blu shakes his head, in awe of the good samaritan helping others find their way to the doctor. He begins to talk about his own mother, still in Minnesota, and the kind neighbors she has. They stop by and check on her, they help her with the tasks she needs done. Without them, his mom, in her late eighties, would not continue to lead an independent life.

He thinks about them often, as he’s helping others here, and they’re helping her. He sees how interconnected we all are, each of us touching the lives of someone else, and how it all comes full circle. How all kindnesses, great and small, fill this earth with hope and love and so much promise it can all but break your heart.

Do South Magazine

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