David Frelinghuysen Bull, the last president of the hot cereal maker Cream of Wheat Co., died Tuesday in Connecticut. He was 83.
The Minnesota native was an active sportsman who became an accomplished sculptor after he retired 30 years ago. Bull recently went in for a hip replacement operation so he could play golf this summer, and that's when doctors discovered melanoma in a lymph node in June. He died at a hospice in Stamford, Conn., surrounded by family.
"He was a genuinely good and decent person, and he raised a magnificent family," said Bull's childhood friend Wheelock Whitney, a Minneapolis philanthropist, businessman and civic leader. "I will miss him terribly."
Whitney and Bull became friends as teenagers, and Whitney recalled Wednesday a tense exchange of phone calls between the boys' mothers some 70 years ago.
"Dave would spend many nights at our house, but his mother wondered why I always came up with an excuse so I wouldn't have sleep at their house," said Whitney, 82. "'Mother,' I said, 'I just don't like Cream of Wheat, and if I stay over there, I'll have to eat it for breakfast.'"
The moms struck a deal so Whitney wouldn't have to eat the popular hot cereal, and the boys went on to become roommates at Yale. Bull was an usher at Whitney's wedding.
"We played golf, tennis and squash together and remained lifelong friends," Whitney said.
Born in Minneapolis on June 2, 1925, Bull attended the Blake School and was drafted into the Army in 1943, serving with an antitank company in the 45th Infantry during the push into Germany at the end of World War II.
