Lawrence Ronald Mullen

Lon died peacefully with his wife Pat and daughters Caitlin Mullen Pickard and Maggie Mullen at his side. Born to Donald Thomas and Nina Luella Lunn Mullen in Lone Rock, Wisconsin, he grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin with his three siblings, George, Jim, and Matina (Deanna). He walked 1-1/2 miles to a one-room elementary school where all the students were Irish cousins and was driving the tractor at age 6. He had a soothing way with the cows, and was called on to pull calves who needed help being born. Lon attended Catholic school and served as an altar boy before moving to Jefferson High School where his father taught agriculture and science. There, he earned many honors—valedictorian, letters in all sports, center-offense and end-defense on the state champion football team. Perfect SAT scores, his athletic record, and leadership positions helped him secure a National Merit Scholarship in its inaugural year and attend Stanford University where he was president of his Theta Chi Fraternity and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and an AM in teaching. The brand new MAT program placed Lon and other young teachers in a low income high school where they transformed the culture and student outcomes.

Lon started law school at the University of California at Berkeley on a shoestring, without money for books. He supported himself with summer jobs and work as a pot washer in a sorority house where he met Patricia Dolan. They married in 1967—the beginning of a 57-year marriage--and left for Peace Corps service in Jimma, (Kaffa Province) Ethiopia. They loved this country and had many adventures hitchhiking through East and West Africa.

Lon’s career in health law and policy started in 1971, heading the Neighborhood Legal Services in Hunter’s Point (San Francisco), the shipyard to which many African American southerners had migrated from Texas and Louisiana. He and the other lawyers were constantly in court, guns were tossed on the roof to hide from the police, and the turbulence was memorialized by Tom Wolfe’s 1970 essay, Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers about the community and their approach to City Hall. Pat dedicated her doctoral dissertation to Lon for his bravery, commitment to his clients, and the success fighting welfare cuts, businesses who defrauded their customers, and researchers who failed to tell study participants they might be in the control group, with no treatment.

From the front lines of Legal Services, Lon joined an extraordinary group of lawyers and policy experts with the National Health Law Program based at UCLA, a backup center for neighborhood offices thoughout the U.S. He focused on class actions, particularly on behalf of Medicaid beneficiaries in the South. The most notable was representing a client in Georgia against the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services (formerly HEW) (Crane v Mathews). The case theory relied on regulations for newly established institutional review boards that required a consent process that had been ignored when the state imposed large co-payments on Medicaid beneficiaries.

The Georgia case introduced Lon to the Carter administration where he joined a talented team working on national health insurance. He and Pat lived on Capitol Hill, renovated a townhouse, and loved their many friends, colleagues, neighbors, and houseguests and the excitement of Washington. With the change of administration, however, it was time to leave town. Lon and Pat moved to a new life in Houston, luckily making their home in Southside Place. Lon worked in the Health Law Section of the Houston office of Fulbright and Jaworski and served as Chair of the State Bar Health Law Section, and Houston professional organizations. Lon was an early feminist who made sacrifices for Pat’s career and was a hands-on dad. He was at every swim meet, game, and performance. He navigated the girls through cities when they were lost and called him for help, he was their companion on cross-country trips, and he never missed the opportunity to help others or tell a story. He was Caitlin’s right-hand tutor for the three years she taught 4th grade for Teach for America, he dressed as a bear for her “Camp write-a lot”, and he continued afterwards as a creative, and encouraging volunteer tutor for 4th graders. In the community, he led the Park Board, he was Santa Claus for holiday celebrations, and he could regularly be seen walking Dolly, his beloved granddog. He loved the life partners chosen by Caitlin (Ryan Pickard) and Maggie (David Pinsky), and his wonderful granddaughters Penelope Grace Pickard (Penny) and Dorothy Fair Pickard (Dottie). Lon was an incredibly devoted partner, father, father-in-law, and grandfather who always put his family first and was forever our cheerleader.

Lon leaves us grieving his loss, but also with a model for a life of honor, purpose, gentle humor, awesome memory, generosity of spirit, selflessness, unfathomable depth of knowledge of baseball, football, and basketball, and love of reading (criminal procedure novels, non-fiction, and obituaries, especially those with humor).

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.earthmanbellaire.com for the Mullen family.