Jim Mullen, 1922-2014

James “Jim” Mullen, 91, died May 26.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday, July 12, 2014, at Carolina Meadows. The service will be conducted by the Rev. Robert Dunham in the Fairways Gallery.

Mullen moved to Chapel Hill and the University in 1959 to establish the advertising specialization in the School of Journalism. Four students took the sequence that year.

Mullen’s colleagues credit him with growth of the school’s prominence in advertising. Today, the advertising sequence is one of the school’s largest. He retired in 1986.

“Jim was an original in so many ways. He was smart, opinionated, witty and wide open to new approaches and potential faculty members with unusual qualifications,” said John Sweeney, a professor of advertising in the school.

“He started the advertising specialization here in the days of ‘Mad Men’ yet was never bound to the restrictions or assumptions of that era. His mind was too quick and sharp to be locked into anyone else's worldview,” he said.

Read or listen to a student interview with Mullen from 2012.

Mullen previously taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Mullen leaves behind his wife, Dorothy, whom he married in 1945. He was a native of St. Paul, Minnesota, and was most recently a resident at Carolina Meadows in Chapel Hill.

He held bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Minnesota and a master’s degree from Harvard University. He also was a World War II veteran.

Mullen was inducted into the North Carolina Advertising Hall of Fame in 2006. The school’s outstanding graduating senior in advertising award is named in his honor.