‘In his memory’: The family of Bloomsday Perennial Dennis McMullen will run in his honor after he died of typhoid fever in October

Bloomsday Perennial Dennis McMullen had every intention of lining up in downtown Spokane for the 50th Bloomsday in May, just as he had for every other one since it started in 1977.

When the first Bloomsday happened in 1977, McMullen was a legal intern working for one of the big firms in downtown Spokane, where quite a few young attorneys knew race founder Don Kardong. McMullen was convinced to sign up, though he wasn’t a runner. His sport had always been soccer.

He did OK the first year, when it was unseasonably hot.

“He was in really good shape,” said his wife, Cindy McMullen. “He ran that one. He did well enough that he did it 48 more times.”

This year, the McMullen family will run in memory of Dennis, who died Oct. 27 at the age of 77.

In the beginning of McMullen’s Bloomsday tradition, he had different reasons for signing up in different years. But then something changed after the 10th anniversary when he said: “OK, I’m committed now,’” Cindy remembered.

He grew up in Seattle and got a degree in music from Stanford University. He attended the college’s Stanford-in-Austria program while a student, then was the assistant to the directors at the program after graduation. That’s where he met Cindy Duffy.

The couple moved to Spokane the day Expo ’74 opened, purchasing a small house in the Gonzaga University area. He attended Gonzaga Law School, and it wasn’t long before he encouraged his wife to also start law school. She did, and in later years, the two would practice law together. He was also the one who encouraged her to run for the Central Valley School Board in 1987, a seat she still holds today.

McMullen was not the type to pack his Bloomsday finisher shirts away in a box, Cindy said. Instead, he lived in them, even at work.

“He wore every single one of his shirts all year long,” she said. “If he didn’t have court, he would wear jeans and sneakers. In the early years, he would wear his Bloomsday shirts.”

Cindy asked him to upgrade to golf shirts in the office so he would look more professional and he did so to humor her, she said.

In the early years, he would train diligently for Bloomsday.

“He would get up really early in the morning and run,” she said.

As the years progressed, he slowed down. First he downshifted from running to jogging. By the time he hit 70, he was mostly walking. But he kept showing up every year.

“He said it was the joyful camaraderie, that everybody out there was happy and just doing it for the fun of it,” she said.

While their three daughters occasionally joined him on the course, Cindy said she only did it with him a couple times.

“It’s not really my thing,” she said. “I was happy to wait at home with coffee and pastries.”

The first year Bloomsday returned to an in-person event after the COVID-19 pandemic, he naturally signed up. But around the end of April, the couple took a trip to Hawaii. “We weren’t paying attention to the calendar,” Cindy said.

When he realized he wasn’t going to be back in time for the race, McMullen emailed race organizers and notified them that he had signed up to do the race in person, but wasn’t going to make it.

“Right away he got an email back and it said ‘No, no, no, you’re a Perennial. Do it there and send us a picture,’” Cindy recalled.

His registration was switched to virtual, and the couple walked the requisite 7.46 miles on the island of Kauai.

“It was the nicest Bloomsday I’ve ever done,” she said.

His next close call with losing his Perennial status was in 2024.

“He got pneumonia in February,” Cindy said. “It just took him a long time to get over it.”

However, he was determined to do the race, so she signed up as well so she could help him.

“I don’t think we were last, but I think we saw the last person,” she said. “He was determined. He really didn’t want to break his streak.”

In 2006, the Perennials created a “Last Man Standing” award and time capsule for the last Bloomsday Perennial. Many of the Perennials wrote a letter for the time capsule, including McMullen.

“I found out about the first Bloomsday run from (now) Federal District Judge Bob Whaley, who was jogging past my house in the early spring of 1977,” he wrote. “He got me to join him and I just can’t seem to quit.”

McMullen wrote about the light poles on the Maple Street Bridge, where the course used to run, swaying alarmingly as thousands of feet pounded across the bridge and the route being switched to go up Doomsday Hill instead of down it.

“I accomplished my only goal when I actually finished under an hour one year,” he wrote. “Since then, I don’t care whether I run, walk or do a combination of both. I guess I will just keep at it as long as I can.”

Last July, the McMullens left their Spokane Valley home with plans for a 10-day cruise from Greece to Venice before stopping in Philadelphia to visit one of their daughters and three of their grandchildren.

The trip did not go as planned.

By the time the couple arrived in Venice, McMullen appeared to have the stomach flu. When they arrived in Philadelphia, Dennis went to the emergency room and was quickly sent to intensive care.

“Somewhere along the line he got Salmonella poisoning,” Cindy said. “The kind he got was Typhoid Fever.”

McMullen was in the hospital for 21/2 months. He’d appear to get better, then get worse again. He was in and out of a coma.

“For everything that got better, they would find something else,” Cindy said.

He woke up from his coma in October and knew his condition and his prognosis.

“When he came out, he was 100% there,” she said. “He just decided it was too much. He told us he wanted to go into hospice. He passed two weeks later.”

McMullen received excellent medical care, and Cindy is grateful that all three of their daughters were able to visit with him before he died.

“To be able to be with family, especially the grandkids, made all the difference,” she said.

Though he will not be at the 50th Bloomsday in person, he will be there in spirit and represented by kin. Quite a few family members, including some nieces and nephews, plan on making the trek to Spokane on the first Sunday in May.

“What we’re going to do this year is do it in his memory,” Cindy said.

The couple had been discussing her making a quilt out of some of his cherished Bloomsday shirts. Before they left on their trip, he picked out his favorites that he wanted included in the quilt.

Cindy still plans to make the quilt, even though he isn’t there to use it. But there’s one T-shirt left to acquire, she said, before the sewing starts.

“When we get the 50th one, I’ll put it right in the middle.”