2018 Herald Person of the Year: Martin Brull

“I feel like a seed was planted in him from a very young age,” Shara Brull said of her husband, Martin, whom she met in Florida while he was attending graduate school at the University of Miami, studying physical therapy. “It drove his career. It drove everything.”
Longtime Rockville Centre resident Martin Brull, 44, began volunteering as a counselor at Camp ANCHOR — Answering the Needs of Citizens with Handicaps through Organized Recreation — in Lido Beach when he was 14. His sister, Lauren, and younger brother, Tommy, joined him.
Tommy died in 1999, at age 23, in an accident near the Williamsburg Bridge. Some of the details of his death are still uncertain. Just 17 months apart in age, he and Martin were close, Shara said, and shared a passion for music and surfing.
“That was a really shocking, traumatic time,” recalled Pat Barthel, a childhood friend of Martin’s and Tommy’s. “None of us had really experienced that kind of tragedy.”
In 2008, after nearly a decade of healing, Martin started the Tommy Brull Foundation, which has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for people with physical, mental or emotional challenges and the organizations and programs that serve them.

Barthel said that the foundation is true to Tommy’s spirit, and that he was amazed to see Martin channel his grief into such a positive cause. Since 2011, Brull has incorporated Tommy’s love for music into the fundraising efforts by organizing benefit concerts, known as the Shine A Light Music Series, which has featured headliners like the War on Drugs, Deer Tick, Kurt Vile and the Violators, and the Felice Brothers.
“People say, ‘Your heart’s in the right place,’ but you see that in his actions,” Barthel said. “. . . He walks the walk.”
Sandy Braun, a director at Camp ANCHOR since 1981, said she remembers when Brull began volunteering as a teenager. He continues to do so, and to date, his foundation has donated more than $100,000 to the camp.
He created the Tommy Brull Adaptive Surf Program at the camp in 2014, which Braun said allows children, some of whom spend most of their time in wheelchairs, to get on surfboards and “taste freedom like they never have before.” In 2015, the camp’s gymnasium was named for Tommy after Martin funded its audiovisual and lighting systems.
A physical therapist who works with children and young adults in local school districts, Brull has helped others more than just physically. Braun noted the relationships he creates with the campers, saying, “It’s almost one of love. . . . There’s so much of an investment in their lives. It’s not just, ‘Today we’re going to practice walking.’ It’s, ‘And what did you do over the weekend?’ and ‘How are Mom and Dad?’”
Whether it’s kissing them on the forehead, laughing at their jokes or inquiring how they’re doing in school, Brull shows those with special needs how important they are to him. “He treats the whole person,” Braun said, “and that makes all the difference in the world.”

A decade of making more possible
What started as a foundation mostly donating to Camp ANCHOR, Shara Brull said, has evolved into one that spreads its efforts around Rockville Centre and beyond.
Last month, the Tommy Brull Foundation held its 11th annual fundraiser in a large tent outside St. Mark’s United Methodist Church. There Brull made donations to 14 people and groups, many of which he has supported for years, such as the village Little League’s Challenger Division and Connor & Friends, a monthly free-play program at the John A. Anderson Recreation Center for children with special needs and their families.
Another recipient was Centre Stage, an inclusive South Side High School theater program in which general- and special-education students perform together. He has paid for the show’s costumes for years, said Ellen White, who helps write and direct the productions.
“He’s such a low-key, unassuming guy, but make no mistake,” White said. “This guy truly lives the life of service to others.”
White also founded Backyard Players & Friends, a local arts-based community program that caters to teens and young adults of all abilities. Because Brull is dedicated to serving the same population of children and adults, White said, he’s the first person she calls when she’s faced with a challenge.
“He comes at you with this cool vibe, like ‘Hey, what’s up,’” she said with her best surfer-dude impression. “He’s so chill, but yet behind the scenes the guy’s moving mountains for people of all abilities. You can’t imagine what he’s doing.”
The Tommy Brull Foundation’s donations range in size. In May, it donated $2,000 to the Achilles Kids’ Run to Learn program at South Side High School and South Side Middle School, which paid for sneakers for 40 students with special needs involved in running a yearlong marathon. After crossing the finish line on the track, the teens took turns standing on a podium, holding up their shoeboxes as trophies of sorts. Brull beamed as he watched them and led the applause as they showed off their prizes.
The group has also put more than $70,000 toward Mr. B’s Playground, to be built next to the Recreation Center and named after longtime recreation Superintendent Anthony Brunetta. Having worked with him on the project’s plans, Rockville Centre Mayor Francis X. Murray called Brull — who, he noted, took his daughter to the prom years ago — “a fantastic human being.”

Seeing people for ‘what they can do’
Patricia Aquino said that Brull has done physical therapy with her daughter, Victoria, who has cerebral palsy, since she was in kindergarten. She’s now a sophomore at Uniondale High School, and he has not only helped her progress with walking, but also helped her deal with other problems. “He kept on pushing her to strive for more,” Patricia said, adding that he is like a part of their family. “Other therapists, they do their job and that’s it. With him, it’s not like that.”
Brull also bolsters confidence in people by celebrating their achievements. For the last several years, he has granted the Tommy Brull Courage and Resilience Award to those who demonstrate courage, perseverance and a positive attitude when facing life’s challenges. In 2016, he awarded it to Jake Lunney, now 22, of Hicksville, who had attended Rockville Centre schools since he was 5.
Lunney, who has Down syndrome, was involved in Backyard Players & Friends and Centre Stage for years, and when he won the award, his mother, Susan Lunney, recalled, Brull explained to him why he was deserving of it. Jake, inspired by Brull’s mission, now donates his birthday money each year to the foundation.
“He just looks at everybody as people and who they are,” Susan said of Brull. “He doesn’t look at them for what they’re not able to do, but what they can do, and what he can help them accomplish.”
Shara, who married Martin in 2002, noted that her husband has inspired their three children — Abbey, 12, TJ, 11, and Kiersten, 8 — to volunteer and spread kindness. He constantly generates ideas for ways to help others, she added. In addition to a Shine A Light concert slated for Jan. 25, he is planning the first Ladybug Ball in the spring, a prom-like gathering for young adults with special needs. The event is named for the insect that was tattooed on Tommy Brull’s thigh as a joke, Martin recalled, and has since become the foundation’s logo. “It’s kind of a sign of new life,” he said of the ladybug. “A sign of hope, and a sign that shows us that he’s still there.”
Brull told the Herald that in looking back at how far the foundation has come, he is most proud of the people he has been able to help and the way that he and the community have been able to remember Tommy.
“A lot of people that pass away, people don’t want to talk about it, because they don’t want to bring up bad memories or hurt people or make them feel sad,” he said. “You wind up just forgetting about somebody . . . and then time goes on and that person’s just gone.
“There’s hundreds of examples of that,” Brull added, “and this is not one of them.”