"‘Divine Daisy’ takes Bud McClure on another of life’s journeys"
by Wendy Johnson, Publisher, Pine Journal

Becoming a children’s author and publisher in midlife meant following an entirely new pathway for Bud McClure. But then, the Cloquet man is no stranger to new pathways….

Born in Harrisburg, Penn., McClure experienced many highs and lows as he was growing up.

“I had a very checkered academic career,” he admitted. “In high school, I could go from getting an A one semester to getting an F the next – in the same subject! It was mainly for lack of showing up. I think part of that was due to my family life, which was somewhat dysfunctional. My sister was brilliant, but I don’t think I ever got reinforced for being bright or intelligent.”

The one gift that McClure’s mother gave him that he treasured most, however, was the gift of reading.

“I can remember from a very young age my mother would take us to the state library in Harrisburg,” he related. “They had all this open area surrounded by stacks and stacks of books all the way up six stories high. I can remember climbing around and pulling books off the shelves and looking at the pictures.”

And though McClure’s family was well read, none of them ever went to college. In fact, he was the first one in any generation of his family to go to college.

“I was totally unprepared for it,” he admitted. “‘Undisciplined’ would probably be the best way to describe it. I never studied and never really went to class.”

He’d decided to become an English major because he liked to read.

“I had a definite attraction to it, but there was really no substance there,” he reflected.

Disenchanted with college, he flunked out, drifted around for a couple of years and then went back and finally finished –“just barely!” he admitted.

But after reaching the age of 28, he at last felt like he’d like to go back to school, and through a series of what he calls “synchronistic and serendipitous” events, he found his way to Springfield College in Massachusetts.

“They literally took me in and changed my life,” he said. “It really opened up the door for me and convinced me of how bright and talented I really was. I say that with all humility, but I never really recognized that in myself before that time.”

He had only been there for a little over a month when he had a sudden epiphany – as he sat looking at a faculty member up in front of the room, he realized that was what he wanted to do with his life.

“There was never any question from that day forward that that was my calling,” he said. “After that, everything I did was oriented toward getting my PhD.”

When he initially went to Springfield, he had decided he wanted to go into counseling.

“I think it was largely a result of my family’s dysfunction,” he determined. “I was drawn to psychology and counseling, and I think a lot of people get into those fields in order to try to help others because they’re wounded themselves. It was a personal and professional journey for me at all times, and I think it helped me out tremendously.”

He found he loved everything about graduate school.

“Everything I didn’t do in undergraduate school I did double in graduate school,” he related. “I read more than was assigned, and I’d monopolize the discussions in classrooms. I figured if other students weren’t going to talk, I was going to because I was so hungry for education and so grateful to have this opportunity in my life.”

He said he also had some wonderful professors who mentored him and really cared about him as a human being and nurtured his growth and development.

“I was a very poor writer in many ways when I went to graduate school,” he admitted. “I lacked the discipline necessary to do a really good job at it, and they helped me through that.”

He did his doctorate studies at the University of Southern California, and after three years he earned his doctorate in counseling psychology.

After working in Japan for a time and returning to the United States, McClure came across an ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education for a job at the University of Wisconsin River Falls.

“I honestly had no idea quite where Wisconsin was!” he confessed. “I looked it up on the map and was shocked that it was so far north!”

He felt a calling to go there, however, and he wasn’t disappointed.

“On the east and west coasts, where I lived most of my life, I was distracted by the big city lights and all that there was to do,” he said. “But when I was in the Midwest, I really had to get to know myself, turn inward and come to terms with who I was. When I consider the spiritual journey my life has taken, I think that’s why I came here.”

He soon met his wife, Debbie, they married and had a son before later deciding to move East for a year so Bud’s dying father could get to know his grandson.

The following year, McClure was faced with a choice between accepting a professorship in Georgia or one in Duluth. He chose the University of Minnesota Duluth, where he teaches courses in personal development and transpersonal psychology – in his words, “those moments in our lives when we feel connected to something greater than ourselves.”

“It’s about finding our way back to that deeper connection and discovering the uniqueness of who we are,” he explained.

And because of his life’s own journeys, McClure is able to relate on a highly personal level to the subjects he teaches. Perhaps that’s why, when the seed of an idea came to him a couple of years ago, he wasn’t able to shake it loose.

“We had a yellow Lab named Daisy who was hit and killed by a truck about three years ago,” McClure explained. “It was devastating, and early one morning, in that dreamlike state between waking and sleeping, I began to get these images about a story. After a month or six weeks, it began getting stronger, and the story of ‘Divine Daisy’ come to me almost fully formed.”

He scribbled down all of what came to mind, which was to become a “transpersonal tale” for children and adults alike. It’s about a special dog named Daisy who came into the life of a young boy at the time he most needed her. At the same time, she formed a magical bond with a clan of rabbits, transcending the bounds of normalcy. Following a tragic turn of events, Daisy joyfully returns to the boy in a state of grace.

“I asked the art department at UMD if they knew of an illustrator,” said McClure. “One day I walked into the Tweed, where they were having a student exhibit,” he related. “Ginny Maki, who was a senior, had done lots of artwork for it, and as soon as I walked into the room I was drawn to her work. I took her name down and tracked her down the next day. She jumped at the chance, and what was really uncanny was that when she did the first image of Daisy lying alongside the road, it was exactly the image I had imagined. It was so powerful. She gave life to the book in a way I couldn’t through just words.”

Since McClure wanted to have complete creative control over the book from beginning to end, he decided to self-publish it by forming his own publishing company, Bumblebee Hollow Press – named after the place in Pennsylvania where his mother grew up.

“All my life I have loved that name,” he said. “As soon as I knew I was going to do this book, that was the only name that came to mind. It was a tribute to my mother, too, who took me the library when I was a young kid. She would have loved this book.”

The initial printing of “Divine Daisy” numbered 1,500 copies and it was officially released at an event at UMD’s Tweed Gallery on Wednesday night this week, with a reading, reception and book signing afterward.

McClure will also conduct a reading of the book at the Cloquet Public Library at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010.

“Divine Daisy” is available at Cloquet Natural Foods, which McClure and his wife own and operate, as well as the UMD Bookstore, the Tweed Gallery, and Northern Lights Bookstore, It can also be purchased online at www.bumblebeehollowpress.com.

“If it’s meant to go any farther it will, and if not, it was a labor of love to have gotten this far with it,” said McClure.

“Our dog Daisy was the gentlest of creatures,” he mused in retrospect. “There was a sense of grace about her, and she had this dog sense of how to nurture people in a special way. She was an extraordinary creature who took over our lives. She lives on now in this book and I see her there and think of her.”

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