Milwaukee Catholic Herald – Vocations 1-16-03

BUS DRIVING BROTHER — When he's not visiting area nursing homes or serving as conductor for the East Troy Electric railroad Museum, Dominican Br. Terrence Bullock drives students to and from Pius XI High School. Here he is pictured on the school bus with sophomore Mallory Liebl, far left, freshman Chris Fasi and Junior Kate Hofmeister. (Photo by Sam Lucero)

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MILWAUKEE — It's been nearly 50 years since Terrence Bullock joined the Dominicans -- known alternatively as the Order of Preachers.

Bullock, now a bespectacled, stocky 67-year-old who wears a smile even more often than he wears his trademark tam-o'-shanter, is a religious brother rather than a priest and he's not a fixture in any pulpit. But that doesn't mean he joined the wrong community in the mid-1950s.

"There are different ways of preaching," the personable Bullock pointed out in a recent interview. "There's verbal preaching. There's preaching by example, being a friend to people, like Christ would be, on earth..."

"Brother T," as he's sometimes called, is the second type of preacher, literally a friend to old and young alike. "My idea of ministry," he said, "is doing a wide variety of things" — things which now include visiting, praying with and bringing the Eucharist to the sick and aged at a couple of health care facilities and busing pupils to and from Pius XI High School.

A 1954 Pius graduate, proud alumnus Bullock started the school's daily pickup and delivery service a decade or so ago, having returned with his order's approval to the area of his boyhood to care for his now 94-year-old widowed father and infirm sister (both of whom are currently residing in facilities at which the Dominican ministers: father George at Alterra Wynwood of Brookfield and sister Mary Ellen at Milwaukee's Marian Franciscan Center).

Pius already owned buses, which were used for athletic outings and the like, and Bullock had driven school buses while stationed in Illinois. His suggestion of commuter busing at Pius met with the administration's approval.

While fewer than 20 students availed themselves of the commuter service initially, approximately 230 participate today. Where once Bullock drove a 55- to 60-mile route, he now confines himself to Wauwatosa, Elm Grove and Brookfield, while five other operators cover New Berlin, Muskego, Franklin and other municipalities.

His driving enables Bullock to befriend members of the Pius student body. They listen to his jokes, consume the treats he or the school occasionally provide on board, tell him about themselves, sometimes seek his advice. Brother T, as the cliché has it, is there for them.

"Absolutely," he stated when asked whether he regards his driving (which includes "charter" trips to retreat sites and other venues for Pius pupils as well as parochial grade schoolers) as a ministry.

Bullock's service to the church also includes evening security and light maintenance work at his home parish, St. Mary in Elm Grove. His mother, Marge, and dad moved the future Dominican and his younger brother and sister from Milwaukee to the then sparsely settled suburb around the time World War II began. Young Terrence served Mass in the quaint old church building that eventually housed a thrift shop (and still stands, just beyond the modern St. Mary campus).

Bullock attended the parish grade school (where his mother later taught for 16 years), graduating in 1950. While attending Pius, he took religion classes the Dominican priests were offering at Mount Mary College and became interested in the order. After high school, opting for what was then called "lay" (and is now called "cooperative") brotherhood instead of priesthood, Bullock became a Dominican postulant and novice in Winona, Minn. In his mid-20s, he was assigned to the order's Fenwick High School in Oak Park, Ill. He professed solemn vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and thus became a full-fledged brother.

"I wanted more of a flexible schedule, to be able to do more things," Bullock said in explaining his choice of brotherhood over priesthood. In addition to activities already mentioned, Bullock has helped on a farm, taught history, acted as a sacristan, done retreat work and counseling, and trained altar servers at St. Vincent Ferrer Parish in River Forest, Ill., where he served for 17 years.

Bullock would reward the best of the servers by taking them to New Orleans, where the Dominicans have a monastery, and one such traveling party included the grandson of a notorious mobster. The man telephoned Bullock shortly before the trip, the brother remembered with a chuckle, and said, "You're gonna take really good care of my grandson!"

His encounter with the don wasn't Bullock's only connection with celebrity. The Dominican's affection for the Green Bay Packers is partially rooted in the fact that his mother's father, John Farrell, was the mayor of Green Bay. Bullock is not related to Bishop William Bullock, who heads the Madison diocese, but he is a distant cousin of actress Sandra Bullock (whom he met once, at a family reunion).

The Dominican's family tree also includes an oil magnate or two, and his late guitar- and piano-playing sibling Bill (who went by the name Bobby Dean) was "Milwaukee's first rock-'n'-roll singer" back in the 1950s.

More recently, Bullock was enjoying a hot dog at Gilles, the Bluemound Road drive-in just a stone's throw from Pius. A man wearing clerical attire entered the crowded eatery and asked Bullock — a stranger who was dressed in civvies rather than in the white habit of his order — if he might share his table. "As long as you don't mind eating with a Dominican," the brother quipped to the newcomer. And soon Bullock was lunching with the equally good-natured Archbishop Timothy Dolan. ("Maybe they should call it St. Gilles now," Bullock joked in retrospect.)

The brother's interest in transportation long preceded his connection with school busing. He spent his earliest years living at 27th and Atkinson on Milwaukee's north side. At age 4, the curious youngster wandered aboard the streetcar that stopped right outside the Bullock home — and rode across town, to 27th and Oklahoma. Nowadays, as a hobby, Bullock is a conductor for the East Troy Electric Railroad Museum, which boasts two dozen refurbished cars, among them streetcars which once transported passengers through Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

Not surprisingly, the one-time history instructor's volunteer duties include providing historical commentary for riders. He'd like to eventually become a volunteer motorman for the museum.

As for his vocation, Bullock conceded that "Community life has its hardships, there's no doubt about it." Still, he's been happy with the Dominicans, an order whose members he described as "mendicants, yet still active (in) ministry in the world situation."

Would the veteran Brother T recommend the brotherhood to a young man of the 21st century? In two words: "Oh yeah."