To no surprise, he starts the interview with a joke. “Would you like the story before or after I was in prison?” says Eric Pullin, as he lounges in his small, but cozy office in the Johnson Arts Center. Pullin is more than a witty man in a Yamaka. A Carthage history professor, Pullin has been through ups and downs to get where he is today. Although it has taken longer than expected, he is now defined by many triumphs. “I consider myself a success because I am doing what I want to do,” says Pullin, “and not because someone else thinks a good thought about me.” Accomplishments don’t make the man; self-definition does.
His Feng shui’s central feature is always the bookshelf. His favorite place in the world is his home lectory. Thus, a large bookcase takes up half of Pullin’s limited office space. Most of the material covers Indian studies. Several large volumes are dedicated Mahatma Gandhi alone.
A tack board behind his computer displays conflicting presidential pins. Ronald Reagan, Barrack Obama, and George Bush all have face time. It is as difficult to understand where Pullin stands as to where he has room to sit.
Martin McClendon, professor of theatre and dear old friend to Pullin, works just down Campus Drive in the DSC. McClendon knows Pullin best, as the two have been acquainted since Eric had Martin’s father as a middle school teacher. “Eric’s political views are very wrong,” he says with a smirk, “He is a big fan of Ronald Reagan and the Conservative Revolution. I hope I’m not giving him away too much, but the man is a Libertarian. I just hope that some day he will see the light.”
Pullin became a changed man on a Yeshiva, the traditional Jewish educational system in which students are engaged in intellectual pursuits and activities over several years on an Israeli homestead. “I learned that success has a cost,” says Pullin, “and that cost is that you have to work hard.”
Eric worked hard and graduated from Rockford College, a liberal arts school even smaller than Carthage. “I knew before I graduated that I wanted to be a professor in a small, liberal arts environment,” says Pullin. He furthered his education at Northern Illinois University with a master’s degree in history. The smooth ride to success ended soon after, as Eric met failure at his first attempt at a PhD. “I had a hard time with a few professors and I let a few setbacks really get to me,” says Pullin. Lacking discipline, he dropped out at the University of Illinois.
After gaining a newfound discipline in Israel, he went back to school and earned a business degree, and received a job in the business world. “I worked in human resources for about ten years,” says Eric, “I made a lot of money. But I hated it.” After an extended career search and marrying his wife, Pullin decided to go back to school and try again for his PhD. “I went to an even better school, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,” says Pullin, “I worked my tail off, and I learned from my mistakes. I finally succeeded.”
Sharing each other’s ups and downs, Eric and Martin kept in touch despite distance apart. If Martin has learned anything from his friend, it is to accept the world rather than fighting against it. While McClendon was going through his own career search, Pullin would tell him, “What is meant to be will be.” This Judaic life philosophy (and Doris Day song) stuck with McClendon and continues to be a life philosophy that the two share.
Pullin also gives guidance to his students. “There is an awful lot of failure in my life,” he says, “but I never quite. I never give up.” He quotes Roman philosopher, Cicero, “Genius and luck are never so aided as when by effort.” Pullin explains that it does not matter what you have set as your goal. What matters is that you work hard and know that unless you make sacrifices, you may never get where you want to be. “Effort,” says Pullin, “makes your luck and brings out your genius.”
Along with his life philosophy, Pullin provides a lesson for his dear friend, Martin McClendon. The instigator of their pranks and jokes, Eric bucks authority unlike McClendon. As much as he bows before the graven idol of Ronald Reagan, McClendon swears his friend is an anarchist at heart. Martin remembers a trip they took to Texas as groomsmen in a friend’s wedding. “The nine groomsmen went to the mall and Eric went through the hosiery display at Macy’s,” says Martin, “and he picked up one of those women’s legs and carried it throughout the story.” The men laughed, as they thought it was a cute prank. Pullin then walks out of Macy’s and into the mall, where he carries the leg into several stores. As if carrying the four-foot plastic leg was equivalent to a Pottery Barn shopping bag, he steps over the line and leaves the mall. “I think he does stuff like that just to see if he can get away with it,” says McClendon. As their van pulls out of the parking lot, flashing lights on a security jeep stop the men from fleeing the scene. Pullin, with a straight face, steps out of the van, leg in arm. “It’s alright. It’s okay, it’s okay,” says Eric to nobody in particular, “I know what they want. It’s me. It’s the leg.” Getting in no serious trouble, pranks such as this one encourage Martin, and those like him who have a real fear of authority, to live a little; to step out of the box and do something kind of crazy.
After undergraduate and graduate school together, and more than enough memories to reflect on, Martin and Eric have a mutual attachment. “Eric is a good friend and I can always rely on him. We’ve had the good fortune of being in each other’s lives when we have both suffered family losses. We have always been there for each other,” says McClendon. McClendon received an email from Pullin about a year ago while in his office at Carthage College. “Eric asked if there were any openings at Carthage, and I told him I would ask around,” says McClendon, “So, I emailed the department head of the history department and asked if he was in need of a professor who specialized in US/India relations. He immediately responded saying, ‘Yes! Absolutely, we’ve been looking for someone like this.’” says McClendon.
Eric Pullin now commutes from his residence in Milwaukee to his current job here, in Kenosha. “I don’t know Kenosha at all,” says Pullin, “I know there’s a college named Carthage here. I drive in from the highway and then go back home.” What Professor Pullin does not know about Kenosha, he does know about his job. “My worst day at Carthage,” says Pullin, “is better than my best day at any other job.” In the same moment, he gets to be a comedian and an expert. Interacting with students, he helps shape their intellectual development and their character. “I get to parade around the classroom like I actually know what I am talking about. I’m the center of attention,” says Pullin, “I get to do academic research and work on my book. Plus I have three kids and a beautiful wife to go home to. Are you kidding me?” says Pullin, “This is a truckload of fun.”
Eric Pullin loves his job, his family, and the projects he works on in his free time. “He is awesome because he is not at all afraid to be challenged by his students,” says Dylan Tate, who has been in many of Pullin’s classes. “You can mess with him, and he will mess with you right back.” He is a friend, teacher, family man, and a scholar. “Pretty much everything he knows about being a decent human being, he has learned from me,” says fellow comedian, McClendon. Wherever he learned his most honorable qualities, Eric Pullin is a man who wakes up in the morning excited to live and ready to make a difference.
