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VICE-PRESIDENT BULLOCK [The National Rotarian, July, 1911]
[Bradford
Bullock was the Charter President of
Rotary Club of New York City #6, 1909 and his is
the earliest known obituary of an officer of the
National Association of Rotary Clubs]
Has Passed on to His Reward
At
the New York Athletic Club Sunday evening, May 7th,
1911, Bradford Arthur Bullock heard
and responded to the call of the Grim Reaper. The body was taken
to the old home in Indiana for interment.
Mr. Bullock was a well known attorney in New York City
specializing in commercial law. He was the founder and first
president of the New York Rotary Club and at the Chicago
Convention took a most active part in the proceedings and
particularly in the work of the committee on constitution and
by‑laws.
At
the time of Mr. Bullock’s death he was 2nd
Vice‑President of the National Association of Rotary Clubs, and
was constantly showing an active and helpful interest in the
work of the Association.
President Harris has written of his brother who has passed on
ahead of us:
“We remember him as a most loyal Rotarian, a man of a naturally
national vision, a cosmopolitan, and one, therefore, most
readily responsive to our national call.
“I
shall like best to think of him as he earnestly worked with us
in welding together the material of the National Constitution
and By-Laws. He and Mr. Cady perhaps did more than any other two
persons in the creation of that splendid code. The wisdom of
many of Mr. Bullock’s suggestions have in actual practice been
made manifest.
The two projects uppermost in his mind during the convention,
the establishment of a national organ and the admission to a
special membership of individuals from small cities wherein no
clubs are located, have not as yet fully materialized, but it
would not be at all surprising if one if not both of his plans
were ultimately to find full realization.
May the members of New York Rotary be fully aware of the fact
that the memory of Bradford Arthur Bullock will not soon grow
dim in the minds of the members of Chicago Rotary and of his
associates in the National Organization.”
At
the funeral services held Wednesday, May 10, 1911, in New York
City, Mr. Robert Willson, who served as Secretary during Mr.
Bullock’s incumbency as President of the New York Rotary Club
spoke as follows:
“The all absorbing theme of our friend Bullock for nearly two
years past has been the Rotary Club movement of New York to give
expression to a few words of appreciation, penned today by Mr.
Daniel L. Cady, who from a long friendship and close association
is well qualified to speak of him whose voice is hushed:
“My Friends: -
“It is never easy to speak of one who has passed, and it becomes
a very difficult matter indeed to speak justly and wisely of a
friend who has passed – one whom we have known and loved. The
mind at once is filled with desolate pictures; and fallen
shafts, prostrate column, and temples in ruin are not animating
subjects. To-night we stand not only by the fallen shaft and
the prostrate column, but near the ruins of that most
magnificent of all temples, the house a soul inhabited. This is
a theme, indeed, to which but few lips and pens are equal.
“But, my friends, it is a pleasure to know that there is another
view of this occasion. Mr. Tennyson says that even the grave has
its sunny side, and in that warm and loving view we are glad
that our friend was born, and was permitted to live for a brief
term of years. We are glad that he had the opportunity to enjoy
the spoils of the sunlight, the streams and the green earth as a
boy; the opportunity to struggle in the battle of life; the
opportunity to demonstrate that he could stand among his fellows
and win the success denied to unnumbered thousands.
“In reviewing the life that has passed, two things will be seen
to have made up a large part of our friend’s character. First,
he was a sincere and loyal American, imbued with the traits and
characteristics of the American born. From the fireside of a
poor clergyman dwelling near the Wabash, alone, unaided, and in
the face of physical weakness, he achieved a prosperous business
of his own in this metropolis. He did this by exercising the
traits and characteristics just mentioned. He not only had the
will to do, but the will not to yield. His belief in himself was
controlling; at times, when his lips were set, he could crowd
and jostle even the embarrassed gods, as Kipling says, and offer
any sort of wager to Destiny.
“The other thing largely dominant in our friend was his love for
his kind as expressed in his geniality and good fellowship - in
short, urbanity. He was most at home with his friends, and never
could have said, with Byron, that he was alone in crowds. None
who knew him will soon forget his kindly eye, his gentle
expression and his warm clasp of the hand. In fact, this
graciousness (I know of no better word for it) constituted a
large part of his life, and will constitute a large part of his
fame. Wherever he be, we are sure that he is amiable and
gracious still.
“And he may not have gone so very far. He may be as near to us
now as we are to each other. Indeed, it is possible that he is
more alive to‑night, in this Springtime and Resurrection of the
year, than when his last Sabbath dawned a few days ago.
‘So with our tears for the dead, we may mingle our cheers for
the living that was.’
“Mr. Cady has so aptly described the qualities of our friend
that, as our thoughts seem to run in the same channels, there is
little for me to say.
“Colton has tersely said:
‘Anthony sought for happiness in love: Brutus in glory; Caesar
in dominion; the first found disgrace; the second disgust the
last ingratitude and each destruction.’
“If I were asked in what our friend thought happiness, I should
say that it was in his endeavors to make others happy and the
constant widening of his large circle of genial acquaintances
and loving friends and this quality will long be remembered
pleasantly.
“May he rest sweetly.”
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