A bonafide character that I met to record his oral history died here in Columbia last week.
Bill Wulff built it.
If “it” is in Boone County, there is a good chance that statement is true. For decades, Wulff and his brothers Al, Martin and Doc were the premier builders in Mid-Missouri. They built hundreds of houses, dozens of commercial buildings, much of Whiteman Air Force Base, a lakeside resort with its own airport – and the Boone County History and Culture Center.
Born in 1931 near Fort Leonard Wood, he worked his family farm (at one time with the help of German prisoners of war) and later became a police officer in Columbia. He found that police work wouldn’t support his wife and child, so became a brick mason and eventually a developer of masonry buildings. Ever the entrepreneur, he opened his own lumber company and brick plant to supply his construction projects. He and his brother, Doc, built hundreds of houses and commercial buildings in Columbia.
He traded a house in Columbia for land on the then-undeveloped Lake of the Ozarks, buying or trading for neighboring land until he had a half-mile of lakeshore. He built the popular Wulff Harbor Resort there, but roads to the lake were so poor that he built his own airport for easier access.
Drawing on his police experience, he organized an auxiliary force for the Columbia Police Department that for years supplemented the stretched-thin paid force.
My favorite story, however, was how he surreptitiously moved a giant bell from the dome of the Boone County Courthouse to the lawn in front. The bell didn't fit the plan for the remodeling of the courthouse and there was no money in the budget to move it. Bill took that as a challenge, so sneaked into the courthouse with friends one night to used chains and brute force to snatch the bell. Getting it down entailed muscling it over a wall and into an elevator and sliding it across the courthouse's main floor. By dawn, they had it installed on the lawn. County officials arrived later that morning to a puzzling surprise.
Wulff and his wife, Helen, also liked to travel. Helen particularly like history and genealogy but was dismayed that Columbia did not have a museum like so many other towns across the country had. That led to a fund drive and many nights and weekends constructing the museum’s home in Nifong Park.
Today, four flags and a bronze monument in front of the museum commemorate Wulff’s lifetime of work.
Bill died Aug. 7, 2020 at Boone Hospital in Columbia. He was here for 89 fascinating years.
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