Person:Ashar Tullis (4)

Mental health advocate Tullis dies Man worked for better programs

By Bonnie Real [email protected] The Courier-Journal, Nov. 27, 2004

Ashar Tullis once headed the Kentucky Association for Mental Health.

Ashar S. Tullis, a longtime advocate for mental-health care in Kentucky, died Thursday at Oaklawn Health and Rehabilitation Center in Louisville. He was 82.

Tullis, who served as executive director of the Kentucky Association for Mental Health from 1964 until 1985, worked to reform state mental-health programs and demand government attention for the state's mentally ill residents.

In 1982, he fought for the "commitment bill," which guaranteed mentally ill patients treatment in the "least restrictive" environment and required they be given a medical appraisal and legal counsel.

Just as the bill was about to die in the Senate Rules Committee, Tullis persuaded its members to consider it.

"I begged, I pleaded ? but they told me they hadn't had time to go over the bill," Tullis told The Courier-Journal in 1985.

While many state health advocates had shown up to introduce the bill to the House just two months earlier, Tullis was now all alone. "I told them to just trust me. It was a good bill," he said.

The Senate endorsed the bill that same afternoon.

Tullis also initiated a 17-member committee to prepare a three-year study of mental-health care that would become the basis of a comprehensive system for the state.

And he worked with the state's former mental health commissioner, Dr. Dale Farabee, and other officials to reform state programs.

Tullis' retirement from the association marked the "end of an era," Dennis Boyd, the state's commissioner of mental health and retardation services, said in a 1985 Courier-Journal article.

"He spanned two decades of phenomenal changes and he was at the front of it all," Boyd said. "He represented people who have no idea what he accomplished for them."

Tullis, who lived in Louisville, continued to lobby the state in various capacities after his retirement.

"As far as I'm concerned there will always be a state of turmoil as far as health care is concerned," he said in a 1976 Courier-Journal article. "Because I don't care how good we get, we'll never be good enough."

Tullis grew up in Winchester, Ky., and graduated from Kentucky Wesleyan College and the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Work.

Before becoming a full-time consultant and advocate, Tullis spent 13 years as the first director of the Louisville Red Shield Boys Club in Portland, a Louisville affiliate of the Boys Clubs of America.

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TULLIS, ASHAR S., of Louisville, died Thursday, Thanksgiving Day at Oaklawn Health Care Facility. He was a native of Cincinnati, OH, a graduate of Kentucky Wesleyan College and the Kent School of Social Work and was the first executive director of the Louisville Boys Clubs. Mr. Tullis joined with Edna Bielefeld in 1964 to create Associated Services Incorporated to offer executive management and development services to small health groups. They were quickly tapped by the Kentucky Association for Mental Health to provide vision and leadership for the following 30 years. Mr. Tullis was the founder and first chairman of the Kentucky Mental Health Coalition, a lobbying group, and was appointed by Governor Martha Layne Collins to her Commission on Mental Health. Mr. Tullis was the first chief executive officer of the Blackacre Foundation, which is now a public wildlife preserve for school children and others, a Kentucky Colonel and a member of the Fourth Avenue Methodist Church, where he taught adult Sunday school for 20 years and was a Methodist lay speaker. He also appeared weekly for seven years on Channel 32's, "Pastors Study." Survivors are his wife, the former Nancy Cauble; brother, Bishop Edward Tullis (Kit) of Lake Junaluska, NC; daughters, Judy Abar of Tunica, MS, Terry Walker (Cliff) of Kansas City KS; a son, William Tullis (Pam) of Louisville; grandsons, Jimmy and Daniel Busby of Mississippi, Jamey Simmons of Kansas, Golden Tullis of Atlanta, GA, and Ian Tullis of Orlando, FL; three great-grandchildren; and stepchildren, Marcia Petry Benninger and Mark Petry. The funeral service will be held at 11 a.m. Monday, November 29, 2004, in the Chapel of Christ Church United Methodist, with interment in Resthaven Memorial Park. Visitation will be from noon-6 p.m. Sunday at Pearson's, 149 Breckenridge Lane. Memorial gifts may be made to Fourth Avenue United Methodist Church, or Summit Academy, Middletown, KY 40243.