This is not to cast a shadow on the man while his family grieves, but to acknowledge something of his reputation, justified or not, which was much integrated into local popular culture and politics for many years, with real consequences that came up in a variety of connections, some definitely connected with the issue of good government in Vernon Township.
[This blog entry is done not under my usual conditions. My apologies for its infelicities. Fixes were done 11/12/12. Please also see 11/12/12 new entry on Mulvihill for further points. Additional edits done 11/15/12 & 12/10/12. For an update, see my 12/5/12 entry. Minor edits 8/16/13. On review nine months after I first posted it, I find this entry is written cumbersomely and with some repetition, but basically, it is like a statement someone found himself positioned to make when stirred to action by a historical development, seemingly half-awake, and surprised he even has to say some of what he is saying (because it should be already understood). This is what it pretty much was last November, and it still seems suitable to leave it as this, now.]
When the time comes, I will talk a bit about Gene Mulvihill in a series of blog posts related to a person I will give the pseudonym Skoder; indeed, by far Skoder is planned to be their main focus, some importantly not having to do with politics. The Skoder posts, whose availability is planned not as you might expect, are envisioned to be offered for a number of purposes.
Gene Mulvihill, of course, was an important component of some matters in which Skoder was involved over a period of time, years ago; and I feel obliged to say something about Mr. Mulvihill only to make the Skoder story, when it comes, easier to understand. But I also want, herewith, to make clear that I am not trying to reconstitute, stimulate, or perpetuate an especially negative reputation for Mr. Mulvihill.
First, though Mr. Mulvihill died in late October this year, my blog postings on Skoder were not prompted by his death at all. So they are not (nor were they intended as) a comment on him. Second, his being a part of the Skoder story should be considered a background matter and not to comment on Mr. Mulvihill per se very much, or to analyze his reputation other than to point out how it conditioned other talk and behaviors predicated on it.
The obituaries speak in glowing terms
The recent obituaries on Mr. Mulvihill—particularly in The Star-Ledger of October 30, 2012 (p. 26)--are interesting, if not somewhat amusing, for portraying Mr. Mulvihill in a certain light. It is natural for his supporters to refer to him in highly approving terms, especially given the suddenness of his passing and his apparently doing well business-wise in recent years.
But local politicians have spoken, as I feel compelled to remark, seemingly with less knowledge of much of the relevant reality than has his family, when remarking in a eulogistic fashion about Mulvihill. These politicians include state assembly-persons and a state senator with their jurisdictions in Sussex County (this is the county in which Vernon and Hardyston Townships lie, municipalities where the properties Mr. Mulvihill developed and supported are located). They have made points about Mr. Mulvihill’s having represented an entrepreneurial approach and having done good by Vernon Township, etc. To me, this has a rhetorical function in reflecting, to some extent, a Republican pro-business stance. This rhetoric from such persons is inevitable; and perhaps in a tough time—not only with an election season we want done, the challenges posed by Hurricane Sandy, and the shortening days and a general seasonal increasing of gloom—we tend to excuse this rhetoric, while in a different time it might be considered posturing, particularly in light of the following.
Politicians who have commented are “out of their league”
The state politicians I just mentioned do not have their homes in Vernon Township, which is the northeasternmost municipality in the county. They tend to reflect a political tendency that I have seen operating within Sussex County more generally, where those politicians—whether county-level, or state-level with their jurisdictions in the county—who seem to speak the most “for” or to the county tend to have their homes, base of operations, general stomping grounds, and so on in the southern parts of the county, especially oriented to the town of Newton (the county seat) and Sparta Township (the wealthiest township in the county).
Meanwhile, the largest numbers of citizens—rank-and-file taxpayers often less civically involved with, or less privileged to have some more-or-less social “entrée” into, the “levers of power”—reside in Vernon Township, Wantage Township, and the towns of Franklin and Hamburg. All these generally comprise a sort of crescent of “populatedness” in the northern/northeastern parts of the county. Those of us in Vernon Township in particular know the tough grittiness of various local political or development issues, which what might be called the “Sparta/Newton grandees” choose to comment on at times, clearly betraying ignorance of, or scorning even getting, real knowledge of details of this tough-to-govern township.
Anyone who has had their own “stomping grounds”—place of residence, area in which they do most of their business—in this northern crescent, as opposed to those more in the direction of Newton—know that Mr. Mulvihill has long had a rather dark reputation. Whether or how much this is rooted in reality (such as a legal issue where he got in trouble for a self-insurance matter in the early 1980s--for some backup, see here, under the subhead "Vernon Valley," but be aware that as of November 15, 2012, important allegations in this Wikipedia article such as Great American Recreation's having engaged in such things in the 1980s as "unauthorized operation of an insurance company" are noted with "citation needed"; but local news entities have covered this latter issue in the past), the simple fact had long been that Mr. Mulvihill had long had a “folk reputation” among many in Vernon Township (and probably in neighboring municipalities as time went on) that saw him as being an exploitive big-businessman, running a park (long called Action Park in the summer [now Mountain Creek] and the Vernon Valley Ski Resort [or something close to this] before Intrawest took it over by 1998) that had numerous problems of its own, whether simply perceived or not. [For more exact information on the 1980s legal problems, see my December 10 entry.]
These problems included (while not all may have been anything he had control over or operational responsibility for): violations of safety rules; ways of not paying municipal taxes quite on time (or paying at the very last minute); and occasionally being subject to having the sheriff come to seize cash when a judgment had to be fulfilled (this may or may not have been connected to cases in which the park had been sued by skiers who had accidents and customers of Action Park who had mishaps; Action Park came to have the folk nicknames “Traction Park” or “Accident Park”). These are all such things as I’ve heard from reliable sources or seen reported on.
Mulvihill was one of several who was prone, not his fault, to a dark reputation in town
This is not to indict Mr. Mulvihill but to point out how widely he was held not in the most respecting regard and some of the apparent basis why. This reputation was in place by sometime in the mid-1980s or so, and certainly lasted through at least the late 1990s. Sometimes it did seem to me overwrought.
In a way, it reflects a broader trend within the local area for developers to gain a dark reputation for alleged, proven, or speculated tendencies to wrongdoing or not serving customers well. This has been true of some developers of “lake communities,” residential areas that are so common in Vernon Township
Not only could such a view be seen among the less educated; even a local attorney who has worked in the township for years—who incidentally has an Irish or Scottish surname—referred in a casual connection (in about 1997) to Mr. Mulvihill being part of the “Irish mafia” or such, something that on its surface seems provoking at best and next-to-impossible at worst.
Again, this is not to simply indict or cast a big shadow on Mr. Mulvihill in his time of passing. It is to point out some of the realities that have colored doings in Vernon Township
If I were to write a more definitive history of Mr. Mulvihill, to whatever limited extent I could do it, it would of course go further than what I say here (and actually, I don’t see a need to do it for the foreseeable future). And of course, this history could well include exculpatory things as well as shadow-casting things; in fact, I try to hint that possibility here, when I say in some connections that Mr. Mulvihill had a “folk” reputation.
This ambiguity about him—and the fact that in some connections you try to “give him a break” for the sake of simple fairness—is reflected in the fact that, in my story about Skoder, I make passing reference to how I went to a length to argue to leaders among the small, active group of Democrats in Vernon Township in the mid-1990s that the folk belief that the township Democrats were somehow a puppet of Mr. Mulvihill (a sort of connection between big business and Democrats that might seem counterintuitive outside Vernon Township) was something we had to be mindful of, as it could be a necessary factor to take into account when strategizing for how to advertise in some ways, or the like.
The popular link of the Dems with Mr. Mulvihill was also such that when I was appointed to the township Environmental Commission in 1996, the man who became its chairman, an educated hydrogeologist with whom I later got to be friends with in a way, initially thought I was a “plant” by Mr. Mulvihill—a kind of stooge for Mr. Mulvihill to try to nullify whatever the Environmental Commission might try to do that might run contrary to his interests (a sort of conflict of philosophies that had been more conspicuous in slightly earlier years, say around 1992).
Obituary details
Consider how an otherwise acceptable-enough obituary, in including various people’s quotes, describes Mr. Mulvihill as “the man whose vision changed the face of northern Sussex County, creating bustling amusement parks and ski resorts where there were woods and farms,” who “dreamed of turning Vernon Township into a tourist destination that could rival Disney World” (both said in the Star-Ledger obit of October 30), and quoting Governor Chris Christie as saying “Gene Mulvihill’s contributions to the economic development of Sussex County are unquestionable” (same source). Consider how the same obit has Harold Wirths, currently the commissioner of the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development and previously a county freeholder, say, “…Gene Mulvihill delivered on his dreams since the 70’s […]. He built the northern part of the county into a renowned recreational area and employed over 4,000 people [there]” (same source).
All this glosses over by quite a bit the many gritty details of what Mr. Mulvihill’s having an influence in town meant, whether the popular reputation was fair or not, and in terms of some hard facts that, as I say, did not support a fully rosy picture. It tends to employ the same starry-eyed public relations that, it shouldn’t be surprising, were the stock in trade of Action Park and the ski area for years.
The respectable man was part of a multicolored picture
If we can agree on this complex side of the whole picture of the man and his business, I can then agree we can give him a sunny sendoff in his passing (indeed, his executive-level work certainly, in sheer practical terms, was an important “rocket engine” behind what grew in the Action Park and Vernon Valley Ski Resort realm, positive along with negative). This while we remember that there was a lot of controversy about him. But again, a lot of the negative reputation seemed to be more rooted in the hearts of many others in town; for me, it was a spectacle to behold and try to understand.
