The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Tull left mark on community
Husband recalls longtime love
By Brian Cox, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: January 24, 2008
At the center of Jackie Tull's life is a love story that spanned more than six decades.
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She was introduced to her future husband while in line at the Women's League cafeteria and, as Paul Tull recounts the story of meeting his wife, it was love at first sight.
"The fact of the matter is, I fell madly in love with the girl right there on the spot," recalled Tull, 90. "It was faster than click. It was boom. Jackie was my one and only."
Tull lost his one and only New Year's Eve when Jackie died from leukemia at the age of 84.
An astute business woman and successful entrepreneur, Jackie Tull was instrumental in helping her husband found The Saline Reporter in 1948, opened and ran Storybook Gardens, a preschool that cared for generations of Saline children, and dealt in real estate.
The preschool, considered groundbreaking at the time, proved popular and Jackie educated herself on early education, working to provide children with a creative and stimulating environment.
The preschool, in fact, underwrote the newspaper in the early days, Paul Tull said.
"It was nip and tuck for quite some time," he said of the newspaper venture. "She did everything possible to help with the newspaper. Her help was immense. She came up with plenty of ideas."
"My mom and dad were an incredibly happy couple and they were willing to work very hard," said her daughter Jody deSalis. "They talked a lot - over little decisions and big decisions."
The Tulls and their three daughters lived upstairs of the newspaper for three years before moving into a house they built in Saline.
In addition to proving adept at launching businesses, Jackie Tull was an accomplished musician, playing the banjo, violin, guitar and ukulele. She played her banjo with the Maury Lawrence Jazz Group and with a band in Sarasota, Fla.
"There was an awful lot of music going on around our house," recalled Jackie's daughter Nancy Byers.
"Jackie was a red-hot guitar and banjo player and I was a half-cracked piano player," said her husband, "and we had more fun singing together."
Reared in the coalmining town of St. Charles, Va., Jackie is remembered as a Southern belle who had a backbone of steel. Her mother and father were funeral directors, who likely instilled in her an entrepreneurial spirit. She would relate to friends that she was in college before realizing that "fire" and "fair" were not both pronounced "far."
Jackie came to the University of Michigan in 1948 to earn a master's degree in speech pathology and found work as a senior clinician helping injured World War II veterans regain their speech. That same year, she met Paul and never returned to Richmond.
She wrote her parents: "I've met the man I'm going to marry. Despite the fact he is a Yankee, he comes from a nice Christian family."
"I wanted to get married badly, badly right away," recalled Paul Tull, "but I thought I should wait to get the paper more established."
He waited about six months.
With Paul heading up the newspaper and Jackie running Storybook Gardens and helping sell advertising for the paper, the couple became well-known in Saline and attended countless sauerkraut dinners, chicken fries and ice cream socials.
"Both of us loved the community we found ourselves in," Paul said. "Saline seemed to be our fit."
Jackie was committed to ensuring her daughters were aware of the world of opportunity around them, taking them to theater, concerts, museums and other cultural events.
"She wanted us to have a broad range of experiences," said her daughter Anne Kirvan. "She made sure we learned how to swim and taught us to drive."
"They exposed us to a lot," agreed Nancy. "That was my mom's doing."
Married for 60 years to the man she met in line at a cafeteria, Jackie Tull died from leukemia Dec. 31, 2007. Her husband said their marriage was a lifelong love affair.
"I was mad about the girl," said Paul Tull. "I still am."
Staff Writer Brian Cox can be reached at 429-7380 or bcox@heritage.com.
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