Mitch Mulas

Mitch Mulas

Mitch Mulas, a dominant figure in Sonoma County agriculture and a fireman for more than 70 years, died Thursday.

The lifelong Sonoma resident was 82. He died at Sutter Medical Center in Santa Rosa of complications following heart surgery, his family said.

The patriarch of a Sonoma County family that now numbers five generations, Mulas was a leather-skinned man whose family often — and affectionately — called him “Chief.”

He didn't waste his words and he spent most of his life working from sunrise to sundown.

In those long days, he turned his father's small ranch on Highway 121 into a 900-head dairy farm that is one of the county's leading milk producers. He also farmed 350 acres of pinot noir, syrah, chardonnay and pinot gris grapes.

“Mitch was an icon in the history of Sonoma County agriculture,” said Lex McCorvey, executive director of the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, of which Mulas was twice president.

“Mitch represented the institutional knowledge that spanned decades. You can't replace that,” McCorvey said.

In 2007, Mulas won a Lifetime Contribution to Sonoma County Agriculture award.

A fierce advocate for farmers' rights, he pitched headlong into battles over land use and regulation.

In 1986, arguing against a ballot initiative that would have prohibited the conversion of farms into residential subdivisions, Mulas said: “Farm families have run this county for the last 100 to 200 years, and if there is going to be a dollar made from development, they want to be the next ones in line.”

Four years later, he helped lead the successful campaign to create the county's Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, which buys open lands and easements to protect them permanently as open space and for agricultural uses and public recreation.

“He was very instrumental in eliciting the support of the agricultural community, in demonstrating the importance of having a district to protect our open space and our public lands,” said Maria Cipriani, the district's assistant general manager.

For four decades, Mulas also ran a volunteer fire department that his father helped start. Until his death, he dropped in on emergency calls to see that things were running smoothly.

“He was always around, even if he just drove by to see if we were doing it right,” said Raymond Mulas, one of his two sons and assistant chief of the Schell-Vista Volunteer Fire Department, which covers a 65-square-mile area and is located at highways 121 and 12.

Mulas was born May 12, 1928, in Sonoma at a hospital on Burndale Road. He spent his early school years at the one-room Tule Vista schoolhouse where he met the girl who would become his wife, Nilda Ricci.

He graduated from Sonoma Valley High School in 1946 and the couple married in 1950, eight years after Mulas went on his first call as a 14-year-old volunteer firefighter.

He grew up on the family ranch and, upon graduating, went to work there, fixing fences and helping tend several dozen cows.

“Dad definitely liked best the cows,” said his daughter Vickie Mulas of Sonoma. “He was happiest when he was up in the morning feeding his cows and driving his tractor around and looking at them. That was what he knew.”

Mulas' others survivors include his wife, Nilda Mulas, daughter Carolyn Mulas of Napa and son Michael Mulas of Sonoma.

Arrangements for services are pending.