Dave McCullar

1951 - 2025

Dave McCullar
January 28, 1951 - July 31, 2025
Dave Michael (Mike) McCullar, age 74, passed away on July 31, 2025. He was at home, surrounded by loved ones, comfortable and at peace following an arduous two year battle with cancer. He fought valiantly until the very end.
Mike was, after all, a Marine. He joined the Marine Corps Reserves at the age of eighteen, though it wasn't long before he volunteered for active duty, as he was uncomfortable sitting on the sidelines while his contemporaries were giving their lives. Though he was not career military, Mike was forever a proud Marine, teaching his children how to play the Marine Corps Hymn on the piano before they reached school age, and developing deep, meaningful friendships with the men he served beside, friendships that he maintained for the rest of his life.
Mike was just as proud to be a Texan. He was born in Kingsville in 1951, the first son to Dave Mack McCullar, an East Texas boy of Scotch-Irish descent, and Kathleen Louise Brett, whose British ancestors settled on the southern Gulf Coast in the 1840s. Mike's first big heartbreak came at the age of five when his family moved to Montgomery, Alabama. He got back to Texas as soon as he could, which happened to be in the mid-1970s, after his tour in Vietnam and journalism school at the University of Missouri. He called Austin home for almost fifty years, though his favorite place in the state was a family ranch outside of Brady, where he loved to watch a sunset from the front porch, cook venison on a charcoal grill, sight in a new rifle at the range, and read by the fire during the rare months it was cold enough to have one.
The ranch had long been in the family of Katherine Wulff, a woman whose Texas roots rivaled Mike's own, who Mike met in the early 1980s. They married in 1982. Their son, David, was born the following year, with their daughter, Emily, coming three years after that. After Katherine passed from breast cancer in 1996, Mike met the other love of his life, Patti Wimbish, who had two children of her own, Bethany and Nick Belisle. They married in 1998, and set about the not-easy task of guiding four strong-willed children into adulthood. The success of their blended family remained one of Mike's greatest points of pride.
Mike was a lifelong wordsmith. He worked as a journalist throughout the 1980s, his writing appearing in the Austin-American Statesman, and Third Coast Magazine, among other publications. His book on Raiford Stripling, the architect who restored some of Texas's most revered historic sites, was published by the Texas A&M University Press in 1985. Mike worked for many years in public relations, but finished his career as a senior editor at Strategic Forecasting, an intelligence publishing company, where he hosted a writing "bootcamp" for new hires, who lovingly referred to the experience as "Big Mike Training."
Mike was adored. So often was he favored by pets and small children that it could annoy the rest of the family. He was a joyful, loving man, with a killer sense of humor, an encyclopedic knowledge of military history, and the ability to quote the entire script of Dr. Strangelove. He was an excellent marksman, and a terrible fisherman, and he loved both in equal measure. A lifelong learner, there was an ever-rotating stack of books on his nightstand. He loved spending evenings on Lake Austin, and was a member of the same book club for thirty years. He rarely read the books, but loved the gourmet dinner parties and lifelong friends. Though for decades the main place he wanted to visit was the ranch, he spent his post-retirement years traveling through Europe (enjoying nothing more than to be a loved one's tour guide through Normandy) and relaxing in the mountain home Patti and he shared outside Taos, New Mexico.
Mike is preceded in death by his father Dave Mack McCullar, mother Kathleen Brett McCullar, late wife Katherine Wulff, and his brothers lost in Vietnam. He is survived by his wife Patti McCullar, sons David McCullar and Nick Belisle, daughters Emily McCullar and Bethany Belisle Gordon, son-in-law Jay Gordon, daughter-in-law Adair Belisle, brother Danny McCullar, brother-in-law Eddie Mock, innumerable friends, and the grandchildren who knew him only as "Boot": Carson, Bear, Harper Grace, Wells and Baby Jo.
Services will be held at 11:30 a.m., Saturday, August 9, 2025 at Austin's Episocopal Church of the Good Shepherd. In lieu of flowers the family asks that donations be made to the Mary Lee Foundation and the Wounded Warrior Project.