Tim McMullan Golf Outing returns

After being cancelled last year because of the pandemic, the Tim McMullan Memorial Golf Outing returned last Friday to raise money for children with special needs.

The outing at the Clearview Park Golf Course, in remembrance of the former South Side High School student who died after an unexpected injury in 2008, when he was 18, resumed its mission of helping children with special needs thanks to the donations of those who took part.

Lauren Falkenhainer, McMullan’s sister, and her husband, Miles, presented a $10,000 check to the RVC Conservancy at the cocktail hour at MacArthur Park after the outing. The money will go toward completing the new inclusive playground at the John A. Anderson Recreation Center’s Mr. B’s Playground in memory of longtime Recreation Superintendent Anthony Brunetta, who died in 2016, at 85.

The playground also received a boost on Sept. 25, when the state released $500,000 in funding for its construction. The money will be complemented by funds raised by the Tim McMullan Memorial Fund the Tommy Brull Foundation, created in memory of a Rockville Centre resident who died in 1999 after an accident near the Williamsburg Bridge; and the RVC Lions Club.

“Having something that’s permanent and tangible is a great way to remember someone you love,” Marty Brull, Tommy’s older brother and the president of the Brull Foundation, said.

Falkenhainer said she believed the playground was the perfect way to celebrate her brother because of its mission to make children with special needs, whom McMullan cared for, feel included. Before his death, McMullan volunteered much of his time to working with students with special needs in the CORE program at SSHS, and at Camp Anchor, in Lido Beach, during the summer.

Falkenhainer credited her husband, her brother, Chris McMullan, and all of Tim’s friends for continuing to support the fund. “Many of them came back from all over the country for this event, which makes me so happy and gave me the push to do it again,” Falkenhainer said. “It’s so telling of how Timmy was because his friends even many years later want to come back and celebrate his memory.”

The proceeds from the golf outing will also help fund several programs: Donors Choose, a nonprofit that facilitates donations to public-school classroom projects; the League of Yes, which establishes and sustains baseball programs for people of all ages with disabilities; Share the Voice, which provides disabled children with adaptive tricycles; and an award for students with special needs who graduate from the CORE program.

“Some people just have a special personality to work with that population and it just kind of clicked with him,” Chris McMullan said of his late brother. “He just had a calling for it.”