Beloved ship carried Bullis through war
Submitted - As a young sailor, Dick Bullis spent most of his four-year enlistment aboard the aircraft carrier, Bon Homme Richard.
By Barbara McRae
bmcrae60@gmail.com
USS Bon Homme Richard: She was an aircraft carrier (CVA-31) and the decorated veteran of three wars. Commissioned in 1944 for service in the South Pacific, the vessel experienced a glory time during the Korean War, in which she played a prominent role, winning five battle stars. She continued to ply the seas and serve her country until finally being decommissioned in 1971 and scrapped in 1992.
She is no more, but she still lives in the hearts of the men who served on her.
Dick Bullis was one of the men who called her home during the Korean years. Bullis, who celebrated his 90th birthday on Sept. 21, gets almost teary-eyed when he talks about his ship.
The Bullis home on Buck Creek Road is a long way from the sea, but it bears ample evidence of his Navy years, including images in his study of Bon Homme Richard with aircraft flying above. He confides that he used to watch them and wish he were flying – later, when he was back home, he did learn to fly.
In the living room is a different kind of maritime homage: a detailed model of the Bonhomme Richard, the frigate captained by John Paul Jones during the American Revolution and the namesake of the later vessel.
A woodcarver of note, Bullis spent a year recreating the Bonhomme Richard.
Bullis was a gunner during his four-year stint in the U.S. Navy, 1950-54. He served part of his final year aboard the Kearsarge, but for the rest of his time, his home was Bon Homme Richard. He and his wife Jayne have helped keep the spirit of both ships alive by faithfully attending reunions of their crews through the years – but not this year, because of the pandemic.
The reunions are for anyone who served on the ship – a sizable contingent as it carried a complement of 2,600 officers and enlisted men. More than 300 people usually attend, but as the years pass, the crowd is changing. The World War II vets who used to be part of the festivities are gone now. The ranks of Korean War veterans are thinning, too. Jayne recalls that their numbers were down to four at the reunion two years ago, when veterans of that conflict were specially honored.
The road to romance
Jayne was still in high school in St. Petersburg when Dick was serving his country. He wasn’t on her horizons yet and she wasn’t planning on a life-changing romance. She knew what she would do when she graduated. She would go to nursing school and enter the career she had dreamed of.
First, though, she would get a summer job to help her mother, a widow.
On a Saturday morning after making that decision, she happened to be across the street from the bank. Impulse led her to go in and apply for a job. She talked with the vice-president, impressed him, and had a job in customer service waiting for her on the next Monday morning. She would stay at the bank for 13 years, honing financial skills that came in handy later when the Bullises made a sideline of real estate.
That same summer, on another Saturday morning, the staff were eagerly awaiting the moment when they could lock up and get out of there, Jayne recalls. Then she heard a call go up, “Bullis is here, Bullis is here,” as Dick came in and worked his friendly way around the lobby.
“They were locking up,” he says. “I got locked in.”
Jayne knew Dick’s sister, who also worked at the bank, but she hadn’t met the newly returned war veteran yet. He soon took care of that. Making his way to her station, he asked where her purse and stuff were, urging her, “Come on! We’re all going to the beach.”
She went along with him but noticed something strange. Nobody else showed up. It got to be 2 a.m., she says. She and Dick were dancing, and still nobody else had come.
Dick, with a mischievous smile, admits to having been “sly.” But, a table covered with photos of smiling “great-grands” tells you that something more than slyness was at work. Cupid was having a really good day.
The road to North Carolina
Dick went to work selling ads at the St. Petersburg Times and settled into a long career – one that he loved. He made salesman of the year six times in 30 years, including the year he retired, his proud wife says. His bosses asked him to stay but he declined, telling them, “I’m going to North Carolina.”
The Bullises had already bought property in Macon County and begun subdividing it. The story, as Jayne tells it, began one evening while they and their daughter Suzanne were vacationing here, staying at Corundum Hills Campground.
Jayne was preparing dinner. Dick went out for tomatoes. And failed to come back in the few minutes she anticipated.
When he finally returned, he told her, “Come on. We’ll eat later. You’ve got to see this. You’re going to love it.”
“It” was a piece of property on Buck Creek – the property they live on now. He was right – she did love it.
Over the years, other family members joined the couple in Macon County. Dick’s brother Pete and his wife Mimi bought a lot and built a house in the subdivision Dick and Jayne were developing. Two of Dick’s children eventually moved to the area – Michele (Hubbs) with her daughter Mandy, and Chris Bullis with his wife Diane. The complex became a family gathering place.
The happy carver
In his retirement, Dick took up the hobby that had interested him since his childhood – carving. He had developed his skills on the Bon Homme Richard, carving pieces to give to friends. In Macon County, he joined Macon Chips and expanded his work, still giving most of it away.
Each piece has a story or two – the story of the sculpture itself, but also of the wood from which it was carved and the journey it took to his hands. An eagle he carved during Desert Storm (“Stormin’ Norman”) came from a piece of jacaranda tree that a neighbor gave him. A lamp began its life as driftwood in the creek behind their house. Another bit of driftwood, which arrived at their door hollowed out and unusable, as far as Jayne could tell, became an enigmatic, masklike portrait.
Dick has plenty of work yet to complete. In his shop, a model of the Ticonderoga is coming together.
This historic steamboat, built in 1906, once carried passengers across Lake Champlain, near his family’s hometown in upstate New York. Working on it is a sentimental journey for him, and a tribute to a lost part of history. Only two side-paddlewheel steamers (the Ticonderoga and the Eureka) survive of the many that once provided essential transport for freight and people across American waterways.
Dick can watch Buck Creek roll by as he patiently works on this major undertaking. Sure, there were larger bodies of water and bigger adventures in his life, but “I’m going to North Carolina” is one decision he’s never regretted.