Rich Mullins: Early Conversations
Excerpt from the final version of Singing from Silence by Pamela Richards 2011:
". . .We got to know one another rapidly over the next few days. Walking across the campus between orientation meetings, at mealtimes, and during sessions at the piano we exchanged the stories of our early lives.
Richard told me he was born October 21, 1955 to John and Neva Mullins in Richmond, Indiana. He was the third child and first son in a family that eventually grew to include six children, of whom one died in infancy. Richard described his father as Appalachian; a fancy word, he explained, for hillbilly.
Richard said he belonged to the prolific moonshining Mullins line. His mother was a birthright Quaker from the Indiana pioneer Lewis family. His family called him Wayne."
* * * * * * * * * *
"I told Richard I’d been born on April 30, 1956, to Earl Ralph Richards and Dorothy Fay Foster Richards in Pittsburgh, Pa. My father’s family had settled Camden, Maine on his father’s side. His mother’s family had emigrated from Ireland. She was a storyteller who read tea leaves and cursed in highland Gaelic.
My mother’s family, on the other hand, was from Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia -- all Appalachian areas. Preachers ran in her father’s line; my mother’s father was R.C. Foster, educated at Transylvania, Yale, and Harvard. He was instrumental in establishing Cincinnati Bible College. My mother’s little brother was Dr. Lewis A. Foster, who was dean of the graduate school while I attended CBC.
I found my mother’s pedigree boring.
I called her an ancestor worshipper because she was so obsessed with her family and their reputation."
* * * * * * * * * *
"Richard told me that he’d been slow to develop speech as a baby. He became a daily visitor to his great-grandmother’s house. She observed the unusual child’s fascination with the hymns she played on the piano in her home. Even at an early age, he could pick out tunes. At the young age of two years, he was beginning to master the four-part harmony of the hymns she played for him every day. He’d sit on her lap, placing his fingers into the keys she depressed as she played, and so he learned.
That’s what he told me, and when I expressed disbelief that a young child’s fingers could reach so far, he had stretched out his large hands for me to see. An artist studies proportion, so I asked him to hold his hands up to his face. An average hand extends from the chin to just above the eyebrows; despite a high forehead, Richard’s hands covered his face from his chin nearly up to his hairline. Muscular, heavy and well-developed, they were the hands of a leader of men: or a disciplined pianist."
* * * * * * * * * *
"I told Richard that my first language was one my brother and I invented; when my father noticed we used consistent non-English words to communicate with one another, he claimed we spoke twin speech. After he began speaking English, my brother became my interpreter. Eventually, I followed him and broke into English myself."
* * * * * * * * * *
"Richard said he began driving a tractor at the age of four, another feat that astonished me. He shrugged it off; not so unusual on a farm. Blocks of wood were cut to size and used to extend the reach of a youngster’s legs to make up the distance needed to depress the foot controls.
But little Richard’s mind tended to wander when he might have been watching where he was going, so he didn’t make the best farmer’s apprentice. Instead, when he was plowing the fields, he was composing his first original songs. He sang me the lyrics of the one he wrote at age four, to the redundant rhythms of the rolling tractor.
'First, there were the dinosaur days, then there were the caveman days,
then there were the Bible days…'
Precocious is the word for it. Playing piano before he’d learned to speak and composing songs before he blushed when girls giggled seemed to have honed Richard’s talent for emotional expression even before he knew what to do with it."
* * * * * * * * * *
"I said that my father was an artist and my mother was an editor who supervised his work when they met. They both worked for Standard Publishing, a religious publishing company. After they married, they moved to Pittsburgh. Their first sons, twins, died the morning after their premature birth. I don’t think my mother ever recovered from the guilt.
My brother was adopted next, and I finally showed up as a miracle baby when my mother was forty-one years old.
It’s not easy being a miracle. I was never good enough to meet my mother’s expectations, and so I developed a lifelong fear of being looked up to and an aversion to crowds. I never knew exactly how much more was expected, but I had a nagging feeling there was more, and that I would continue to disappoint."
* * * * * * * * * *
"Richard spoke of his own fears. It turns out it had taken his whole childhood to grow into those large hands of his. When he was young, he suffered a fear of shadows that he imagined could devour him, a fear of hanging upside down on our little spinning planet during the nighttime hours of darkness. It took him years to overcome his fear of the dark.
There was something skewed about his early development. Despite his obvious gift for music, Richard described himself as the smallest kid in class, even after he was held back in second grade. He was behind academically, he was clumsy, he had no athletic skills, and with all these disadvantages, he had difficulty making friends.
Richard and I were excited to learn we had so much in common in our school years. 'You were smallest in your class? Yeah, me too.'
'Did you have any friends to stand up for you? No? Me, neither.'
'Were you bad at sports? Really? Don’t tell me you were the one the captains would argue over so they could keep you off their team? Yeah, that was me, too.'
'Did you have to play dodge ball in gym? That’s the worst!'
The smallest kid in gym class only develops one athletic skill: dodging. I knew all about it. It’s not exactly an athletic skill, but you also get pretty good at trying not to cry when dodging doesn’t work. Not right away, but eventually.
We had even both expressed an interest in missions work so we could die martyrs and go straight to heaven. We might have been behind in other areas, but being picked on was something we understood, something we were good at. Might as well make a career of it, and one with a good payoff.
By the time we met, Richard was perhaps seven inches taller than me, but I empathized with what he’d been through. I remembered a lyric my father recited to console me when I’d been bullied on the playground. I never knew the tune, but I knew Richard would understand the sentiment, so I recited it to him:
'I met a little elf man once
Down where the lilies blow
I asked him why he was so small
And why he would not grow
He slightly frowned, and with his eye
He looked me through and through
"I’m quite as big for me," said he,
"As you are big for you.’”
--John Kendrick Bangs, "The Little Elf"
On the playground that charm had proven worthless—-but Richard was delighted with it. He called it back to me and I repeated it a few times until he could recite it by heart. In the process, the bullied child in each of us agreed to be friends. The little lyric became our pact of friendship. Regardless of our differences, regardless of the reaction we each got from the outside world, we respected one another’s intrinsic worth . . ."
Richard told me he was born October 21, 1955 to John and Neva Mullins in Richmond, Indiana. He was the third child and first son in a family that eventually grew to include six children, of whom one died in infancy. Richard described his father as Appalachian; a fancy word, he explained, for hillbilly.
Richard said he belonged to the prolific moonshining Mullins line. His mother was a birthright Quaker from the Indiana pioneer Lewis family. His family called him Wayne."
* * * * * * * * * *
"I told Richard I’d been born on April 30, 1956, to Earl Ralph Richards and Dorothy Fay Foster Richards in Pittsburgh, Pa. My father’s family had settled Camden, Maine on his father’s side. His mother’s family had emigrated from Ireland. She was a storyteller who read tea leaves and cursed in highland Gaelic.
My mother’s family, on the other hand, was from Kentucky, Ohio and Virginia -- all Appalachian areas. Preachers ran in her father’s line; my mother’s father was R.C. Foster, educated at Transylvania, Yale, and Harvard. He was instrumental in establishing Cincinnati Bible College. My mother’s little brother was Dr. Lewis A. Foster, who was dean of the graduate school while I attended CBC.
I found my mother’s pedigree boring.
I called her an ancestor worshipper because she was so obsessed with her family and their reputation."
* * * * * * * * * *
"Richard told me that he’d been slow to develop speech as a baby. He became a daily visitor to his great-grandmother’s house. She observed the unusual child’s fascination with the hymns she played on the piano in her home. Even at an early age, he could pick out tunes. At the young age of two years, he was beginning to master the four-part harmony of the hymns she played for him every day. He’d sit on her lap, placing his fingers into the keys she depressed as she played, and so he learned.
That’s what he told me, and when I expressed disbelief that a young child’s fingers could reach so far, he had stretched out his large hands for me to see. An artist studies proportion, so I asked him to hold his hands up to his face. An average hand extends from the chin to just above the eyebrows; despite a high forehead, Richard’s hands covered his face from his chin nearly up to his hairline. Muscular, heavy and well-developed, they were the hands of a leader of men: or a disciplined pianist."
* * * * * * * * * *
"I told Richard that my first language was one my brother and I invented; when my father noticed we used consistent non-English words to communicate with one another, he claimed we spoke twin speech. After he began speaking English, my brother became my interpreter. Eventually, I followed him and broke into English myself."
* * * * * * * * * *
"Richard said he began driving a tractor at the age of four, another feat that astonished me. He shrugged it off; not so unusual on a farm. Blocks of wood were cut to size and used to extend the reach of a youngster’s legs to make up the distance needed to depress the foot controls.
But little Richard’s mind tended to wander when he might have been watching where he was going, so he didn’t make the best farmer’s apprentice. Instead, when he was plowing the fields, he was composing his first original songs. He sang me the lyrics of the one he wrote at age four, to the redundant rhythms of the rolling tractor.
'First, there were the dinosaur days, then there were the caveman days,
then there were the Bible days…'
Precocious is the word for it. Playing piano before he’d learned to speak and composing songs before he blushed when girls giggled seemed to have honed Richard’s talent for emotional expression even before he knew what to do with it."
* * * * * * * * * *
"I said that my father was an artist and my mother was an editor who supervised his work when they met. They both worked for Standard Publishing, a religious publishing company. After they married, they moved to Pittsburgh. Their first sons, twins, died the morning after their premature birth. I don’t think my mother ever recovered from the guilt.
My brother was adopted next, and I finally showed up as a miracle baby when my mother was forty-one years old.
It’s not easy being a miracle. I was never good enough to meet my mother’s expectations, and so I developed a lifelong fear of being looked up to and an aversion to crowds. I never knew exactly how much more was expected, but I had a nagging feeling there was more, and that I would continue to disappoint."
* * * * * * * * * *
"Richard spoke of his own fears. It turns out it had taken his whole childhood to grow into those large hands of his. When he was young, he suffered a fear of shadows that he imagined could devour him, a fear of hanging upside down on our little spinning planet during the nighttime hours of darkness. It took him years to overcome his fear of the dark.
There was something skewed about his early development. Despite his obvious gift for music, Richard described himself as the smallest kid in class, even after he was held back in second grade. He was behind academically, he was clumsy, he had no athletic skills, and with all these disadvantages, he had difficulty making friends.
Richard and I were excited to learn we had so much in common in our school years. 'You were smallest in your class? Yeah, me too.'
'Did you have any friends to stand up for you? No? Me, neither.'
'Were you bad at sports? Really? Don’t tell me you were the one the captains would argue over so they could keep you off their team? Yeah, that was me, too.'
'Did you have to play dodge ball in gym? That’s the worst!'
The smallest kid in gym class only develops one athletic skill: dodging. I knew all about it. It’s not exactly an athletic skill, but you also get pretty good at trying not to cry when dodging doesn’t work. Not right away, but eventually.
We had even both expressed an interest in missions work so we could die martyrs and go straight to heaven. We might have been behind in other areas, but being picked on was something we understood, something we were good at. Might as well make a career of it, and one with a good payoff.
By the time we met, Richard was perhaps seven inches taller than me, but I empathized with what he’d been through. I remembered a lyric my father recited to console me when I’d been bullied on the playground. I never knew the tune, but I knew Richard would understand the sentiment, so I recited it to him:
'I met a little elf man once
Down where the lilies blow
I asked him why he was so small
And why he would not grow
He slightly frowned, and with his eye
He looked me through and through
"I’m quite as big for me," said he,
"As you are big for you.’”
--John Kendrick Bangs, "The Little Elf"
On the playground that charm had proven worthless—-but Richard was delighted with it. He called it back to me and I repeated it a few times until he could recite it by heart. In the process, the bullied child in each of us agreed to be friends. The little lyric became our pact of friendship. Regardless of our differences, regardless of the reaction we each got from the outside world, we respected one another’s intrinsic worth . . ."
Richard Mullins: Let the Mountains Sing
Excerpt from Singingfrom Silence @ Pamela Richards 2010
Photo @ Marlene Curtin Used by Permission