LITTLE ROCK — The Rev. Charles H. Pullin was a minister up to the end, officiating a wedding ceremony about five hours before his death.
“He preached a wedding the day he died right here in his house ... his best friend’s widow got remarried,” said his grandson, Chuck Jones. “[He enjoyed] just seeing people come to the Lord and know him as their savior.”
Pullin, a Southern Baptist minister for 37 years, died Saturday at Ashley County Medical Center in Crossett from a heart attack.
He was 86.
Pullin was just a child working on the family farm in Kilbourne, La., when he started to feel called to a religious life.
“The Lord started speaking to him about preaching when he was young and it took several years for him to really understand,” said his grandson, Wade McDonald.
After serving two years in the U.S. Army, Pullin returned to Louisiana to farm. At 23, he fell in love with a 15-year-old neighbor, Bobbie Judkins, and the couple married in 1950.
“She thought he was the best looking thing in the whole world,” McDonald said.
The couple moved to Texas where Pullin sold insurance, owned a grocery store and worked for an oil company before being ordained a minister in 1975.
“He said the Lord just kept working on him, working on him and he finally gave in,” Jones said.
Pullin preached throughout Arkansas, including 10 years at Gardner Baptist Church in Hamburg.
On Wednesday and twice on Sundays, Pullin was at the pulpit sharing a message that always included the importance of taking children to church.
“Every now and then ... he’d bring the kids up to the front of the church and read them a [Bible] verse and explained it the best he could,” McDonald said. “He always had candy in his pocket. The kids would come up and hug him and everyone got candy ... Mentos and gum.”
Pullin’s sermons were short and direct, lasting about 15 to 20 minutes, so “everyone [was] home by dinner,” McDonald said. Occasionally, he’d preach an extra five minutes.
“I’d say, ‘I can’t believe you went that long’ and [he’d say], ‘I felt there were people there that needed some more talking to,’” McDonald said.
Pullin never gave up on bringing someone closer to God, once traveling to Little Rock to minister to a man on his deathbed.
“[The man] told him for years he didn’t care to be saved,” McDonald said. “He knew he was dying and just wanted to be saved before he died ... and wanted my granddaddy to do it.”
Besides preaching, Pullin visited people every morning throughout south Arkansas and northern Louisiana.
“He was a small-town preacher that cared,” friend Steve Hartshorn said. “He didn’t care what church you were a member of. If you were sick in the hospital or nursing home, he was going to visit you.”
Even after he retired in February, Pullin was always available to preach at funerals, said Hartshorn, who owns Jones-Hartshorn Funeral Home in Hamburg.
“If they had people that weren’t members of churches, they could always call him to preach at the funeral,” Jones said.
In addition to officiating the wedding Saturday, Pullin attended a funeral visitation and worked in his vegetable garden.
“He always had one row of flowers he’d plant for my grandmother,” McDonald said.
Jones said his grandfather lived for helping others, but put his family first.
“His favorite love in the world was his wife. That’s the one thing he lived for was to please her,” Jones said. “We just found out [Monday] she doesn’t know how to pump gas ... he took care of everything.”
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 07/24/2012