Bruce Duncan had it all. Until he didn’t.

“I had the best of everything, I had the job I wanted, the profession, the wife, the house,” says the 63-year-old.

But everything changed on Oct. 17, 2009. He was coming home from a University of Florida football game and was yards a few yards away from his driveway when he turned left on Wolf Branch Road into the path of a motorcyclist, killing Steve Muller., a retired postal worker.

There was a bottle of vodka in Duncan’s truck, and his blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit. He would plead guilty to DUI manslaughter and spend almost a decade in prison.

Calling his actions “inexcusable,” according to the Orlando Sentinel, Duncan told the judge, “I can assure you that I will spend whatever time I have left when I get out of prison to try to rectify what I have done in some way, shape or form.”

 Today, he works to live up to that promise, speaking to various groups about how not to live your life addicted to drugs or alcohol.

“I can speak to a roomful of engineers and doctors and say, ‘You don’t think it can happen to you, but it can.’”

Denial is a key part of alcoholism, he says.

Even six months after the accident, it took his wife, Stephanie, to make him realize it.

“On April 24, 2010, I woke up and my wife said, ‘I think you have a problem.’ I quit drinking that day. It was not easy. I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous.”

He had a stereotype in mind. “I didn’t drink in the morning. I didn’t wait outside for the liquor store to open.”

It was his competitive nature and his success that in a way proved to be his downfall.

“How can I be an alcoholic if I’m accomplishing all these things?” he asked himself.

The “things” included being the head of a business, being an assistant county attorney,  and being an active leader in numerous community organizations.

But after reading the AA handbook, he realized there are different kinds of alcoholics, and that he was a functioning alcoholic.

He was facing a minimum mandatory sentence of four years in prison. Friends and supporters rallied, calling for a light sentence, including his attorneys, Mike Graves and John Spivey. They cited his public service and helping others, including as a former assistant public defender. His family is legendary, his ancestors helped create Lake County government.

 Mullen’s family was not impressed, however, and some wanted the maximum 15 years in prison.

One of Muller’s brothers wrote to the judge saying the tragedy caused him to be depressed and have nightmares.

Mullen, 61, a confirmed bachelor, had been in the Navy during the Vietnam War, then went on to a long career with the Postal Service.

A friend wrote that Muller’s family took him in when he was a child and treated him like he was a member of the family.

“He was like his parents before him. Generous, kindhearted and always there to lend a hand to a friend or stranger.…”

In court, Duncan apologized to the family, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “My actions were inexcusable.

He still feels terrible about what happened. “He had just retired and was going to travel the country on his motorcycle, and I took that from him.

Prison was hard, but he said that unbeknownst to him, God had prepared him, including working with clients at the Public Defender’s Office.

He always asked the clients two questions: Did you graduate from high school, and was there a father in the home? Invariably the answer was no. Also, they were poor, giving him even more perspective.

He learned something else, too.

“There are a lot of artists in prison. Art comes from pain.” .

Being the youngest of four rough-and-tumble brothers also helped.

“If you don’t know how to fight you won’t last long in prison,” he says.

But there came a time when he thought about ending it all.

The one constant had been the support of his wife. Then, came the letter in 2017 saying she had found someone else.

He had a trustworthy job in prison, handing out tools. When the workers left, he tried to hang himself with an electrical cord looped over the rafters. “I couldn’t kick the ladder out. I was so mad.”

He went back to his cell and fell to his knees. “God, “I’m giving this to you.”

He then sat down and mapped out a plan to meet a series of goals to get out of prison as quickly as possible. He was released in 2020 and was granted permission to end his probation in 2022.

His law license is still suspended, but he is in a new relationship, and he has a job with Lake-Sumter State College where he handles the school’s contracts and travels to Tallahassee to follow the Legislature’s education bills.

 It’s not been easy.

“Oscar Wilde said your friends stab you in the front.”

He is thankful for the hard-work ethic his parents passed on to him and how important it is to have a purpose in life.

“You look at a duck on a pond, and you think, how peaceful and majestic. What you don’t see are the feet going 900 mph,” he says.

Is he making a difference? “I think I am. I’m told that I am.”