Rooted in Franklin County

Tom Cooney and Marty Mullin have spent decades helping protect the birds, trails, history and quiet beauty of the place they call home.

On a hillside in Franklin County, Indiana, Tom Cooney and Marty Mullin can point in almost any direction and tell you a story.

There is the right-of-way where REMC line crews make their way through the woods when storms roll through. There is the bluebird box near the garden where a pair recently nested. There is the valley below, the canal corridor, the trail, the river, the old railroad path and the landscape Tom’s father once described as “prettier than Brown County, but don’t tell anybody.”

For Tom and Marty, Franklin County is more than a beautiful place to live. It is a place worth noticing, studying, caring for and protecting.

“I would encourage people to look around them,” Tom said. “Get out. See what’s interesting. Build a passion for what’s around you.”

That philosophy has guided much of the couple’s volunteer work, from the Whitewater Canal Trail to the Franklin County Bluebird Project.

The bluebird work began more than 20 years ago through the Whitewater Environmental Council, a local group that had also organized cleanups and recycling efforts. At the time, bluebirds were struggling because of pesticide use, loss of habitat and fewer nesting places. As secondary cavity nesters, bluebirds cannot create their own nesting holes. They depend on places already formed by nature or by other birds.

So the group decided to help.

With grant support and help from local students, volunteers began building and installing bluebird boxes in places like the county park, town park and private properties. What started with dozens of boxes eventually grew to more than 100.

Marty, a retired special education teacher, became one of the project’s steady hands. Each nesting season, beginning as early as late March and sometimes stretching into September, she checks boxes weekly, records eggs and hatchlings, watches for tree swallows and bluebirds, and reports data to larger research efforts.

Today, her work connects Franklin County to something much bigger. Marty now submits nesting data to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and Miami University students have been visiting local boxes as part of research on bluebirds, temperature, parasites, pesticides and nesting conditions.

“It’s fascinating,” Marty said. “They band the babies, take tiny blood samples, and collect data from the boxes. It’s amazing to watch.”

The work has also brought moments of simple joy. Marty lights up when she talks about tree swallows swooping through the air to catch craft feathers tossed into the wind, then carrying them back to line their nests.

“They’ll dive and catch them in the air,” she said. “It’s just amazing.”

Tom’s longtime passion has been the Whitewater Canal Trail. He has been involved since the early days of the effort, when volunteers began looking at the historic canal corridor as a future linear park.

The long-term vision stretches from Hagerstown toward Lawrenceburg, with connections that could one day reach even farther. It is ambitious work, but Tom believes the value is clear.

“We’ve passed the tipping point where people understand the value of trails,” he said. “They attract people. They bring economic development. They bring community support.”

The trail also preserves history. Along the corridor, visitors can see traces of the old canal system, locks, the river and the railroad that eventually helped make canal travel obsolete. In some places, Tom said, you can stand in one spot and see the river, the canal and the railroad together.

For Marty, one of the best parts is seeing how many people now use the trail.

“You see people with baby buggies, people walking, people riding bikes,” she said. “Just a whole variety of people. It’s pretty neat.”

Their commitment to the community extends beyond birds and trails. Marty has served with Friends of the Library, the Franklin County Historical Society, retired teachers’ groups and other organizations. Both understand that lasting community work rarely happens alone.

“You don’t always have to be physically involved cleaning up a trail or monitoring boxes,” Marty said. “It could be your ideas. It could be volunteering to be on a board. It could be helping get other people involved.”

Living in a rural, wooded area has also given Tom and Marty a close view of the importance of reliable electric service. Over the years, they have seen improvements in equipment, right-of-way work and response after outages.

“Oh gosh, yes,” Marty said, when asked whether reliability has improved. “When they come, whether it’s dark or early morning, they’re trying to find what caused the outage. It’s not easy with the forests they have to go through.”

They also appreciate the arrival of fiber internet through the cooperative.

“That was amazing,” Tom said.

Before fiber, internet access could be frustrating. Tom recalled traveling in South America and finding better internet in the jungle than they had at home.

Today, fiber has made a real difference.

“It’s been wonderful to have,” Marty said. “It’s been reliable.”

For Tom and Marty, the cooperative connection is part of a larger story about rural life, one where modern service supports people who are deeply rooted in place.

They hope others will see Franklin County the way they do: not as somewhere remote or overlooked, but as a place filled with natural beauty, history, wildlife and possibility.

“It’s a lovely county,” Marty said. “A lovely valley.”

Tom agreed.

“It’s worth the effort to preserve,” he said.