Lifelong traveling companions

Jim and Kathy Bullis began their relationship with a College trip to the Everglades in 1978. They have journeyed together ever since.

Jim ’78 and Kathy ’78, ’84 Bullis have traveled widely in 42 years of marriage – to Australia, Hawaii, the Caribbean, England, Scotland, Ireland and most of the U.S.

No destination rivals the South African game reserve they explored through an FLCC travel course in summer 2024. Every day brought wonders: rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, giraffes, zebras and numerous antelopes. Not far from their camp, they heard lions making a kill, then spotted one the next day, casually chewing a hide.

“Seeing an animal in the zoo is one thing. Seeing it in the wild is totally different. It doesn’t compare,” Jim says.

“It was the best trip that we’ve ever been on,” Kathy agrees.

Jim and Kathy seized the chance to join the 14-day FLCC Unique Ecological Communities course. They stayed in a bare-bones camp with daily outings.

The cover of the spring 2025 Laker magazine featuring Jim and Kathy Bullis “My highlight overall was walking around on the ground, right in the wild, and the daily ‘dirt time’ spent learning to read and identify all the available signs of wildlife like tracks, scat and habitat changes,” he explains.

Jim and Kathy traveled with a mixed group of 14 other students. Most were traditional-aged in their teens and 20s. Another alumnus joined the trip, as did a nursing instructor. Maura Sullivan and John Bateman, both conservation faculty, led the class. The tracking experts hired as guides impressed the couple daily with their encyclopedic knowledge of the reserve’s wildlife, from insects to elephants.

The anticipation, the rigors of travel, and the striking views recalled another FLCC travel course 46 years earlier: the one where they met.

This article is the cover story of the spring 2025 Laker magazine. You can read the full magazine online.

The car to Florida

Lucky for Kathy, travel courses are not limited to certain majors. She was studying human services but had heard so much about the conservation trip to the Florida Everglades.

“My brother went on the trip with his girlfriend in ’75, and they got to go scuba diving and snorkeling all over the coral reefs. I thought it would be great,” she says.

She had seen Jim around campus, but they hadn’t spoken until she found herself in a car with him and two other students.

“I thought he was hilarious. He was constantly doing limericks and stuff like that.”

“I was chasing some other girl,” Jim admits. She was in a different car, also headed to Florida.

After they got back to FLCC, Jim and Kathy started seeing more of each other.

“It was a few weeks later, and the girl he was interested in on the trip –” Kathy begins.

“ – she wasn’t interested in me,” Jim says.

Jim convinced Kathy to join the logging sports team, called the woodsmen at the time. She embraced it and earned a spot on the men’s B team. Jim was captain of the men’s A team. For many years as alumni, they were scorekeeper and head judge at home meets to help out Marty Dodge. Marty, now professor emeritus, taught conservation and coached the woodsmen from the team’s inception in 1974 until his retirement in 2011.

“I loved Marty,” Kathy begins.

“He was so encouraging and always bringing out the best in people,” Jim says. “He was smart. He had the skills and the knowledge and was so inspiring.”

A life together

Kathy and Jim competed as lumberjacks for a few years after graduation in 1978. They married in 1982.

Jim had an associate degree in natural resources conservation. He had taken several classes associated with the conservation law-enforcement degree and earned A’s in his Criminal Law and Law of Evidence classes. After a series of odd jobs, he had a chance to join Yates County as a corrections officer.

“They were paying twice as much as I ever made in my life,” he recalls. The other officers were planning to take the state trooper exam, so Jim did, too. He passed and began a 31-year career with the New York State Police, six years as a patrol trooper and 25 years as a sergeant. For many years he was a training officer for numerous courses, mainly firearms training.

Kathy worked for an electronics manufacturer, which covered her tuition for engineering courses at FLCC. While back in school, she also finished up a conservation degree and an environmental studies certificate.

Kathy then trained as an optician, a field that would allow her to get work wherever Jim was stationed. She suspended her career to care for their autistic son, James Jarvis, called J.J. Schools were just starting to grapple with special needs, so Kathy became an advocate for J.J. and other children with autism. She traveled to North Carolina to learn about and share teaching techniques and co-founded the Chenango County Autism Society.

Logging sports remained a constant in their lives. After Marty retired, they switched to assistant coaching for the SUNY Morrisville team. The school is closer to their home in Oxford, about 30 miles northeast of Binghamton.

Back where they started

Kathy and Jim continue to maintain their connections with FLCC alumni and attended the 50th anniversary celebration of the logging sports team in April 2024. By then, they had signed up for the Africa trip that left such an impression.

An encounter with a rhino left them breathless. The driver of their open truck had told them to keep an eye out as the animals could be anywhere.

“If you see something, you shout out,” Jim explains. “So I said, ‘Hey … I saw something grayish.’ … The driver backs up and says, ‘Oh, that’s a rhino.’ So he goes off the road –”

“– he’s driving over little trees,” Kathy adds.

The driver stopped a short distance from the hulking beast so they could observe.

“He said, ‘This hardly ever happens. Usually you can’t get up to them this close. So we’ll just sit here quietly and watch,’” Jim says. “So it’s there, and all of a sudden, it sees us.”

“It tips its head sideways a couple times and it trots right over,” Kathy adds.

“It’s horn is this far from the side of the vehicle,” Jim says. He raises both hands, holding them just over a foot apart.

“He’s not exaggerating,” Kathy confirms.

“The girl who was sitting at that canvas door, she was scared out of her mind. Finally, it just rumbled off,” Jim finishes, still astonished as he tells it.

The pair were also impressed by their companions.

“The students – they were the best,” Jim says. “They were so smart, they were so dedicated, they were so diligent. They were so studious. I said, ‘Guys, you are always writing in your journals!’”

Jim and Kathy admit to slacking off a bit in their daily entries. This was a graded class, after all. In down times, Jim laughs, he preferred a nap.

“They knew we were the old couple. A couple of them were very attentive to us, if we needed something. There were a lot of comments about ‘How can you still be in love after all this time?’”

“What I tell anybody,” Kathy says, “is before you get married, talk about your divorce. Talk about the fact that there isn’t going to be one. Marriage is not always fun. You got to work at it.”

“We just came from that era in the 70s,” Jim adds. “We didn't each have a lot. You get together and you kind of make do with what you do have. Life goes on, and you just work it out together.”

Tell us about your latest adventure. Use our online Class Notes form.

The next South Africa trip: July 2026

The next South Africa trip is already on the books for July 6-18, 2026.

The 3-credit course is Conservation 215: Unique Ecological Communities, South Africa Tracking and Field Ecology.

Course activities include field lectures, wildlife drives, mapping and documentation, and field journaling. Students must be prepared for strenuous physical activities in areas with dangerous animals.

Students pay all travel fees, plus course tuition, currently $672. The Emil Muller Foundation provided a $17,000 grant to defray students’ expenses in 2024, making the trip possible for several participants. The College plans to seek funding to assist with the 2026 trip as well.

To ask questions or express interest, email to Maura.Sullivan@flcc.edu or John.Bateman@flcc.edu.