On this father’s day, I am thinking of “Sir”–my father’s nickname given to him when he became a grandfather. It was a natural thing for the grandchildren to call him, since he was a military officer for most of his career and all of his eight children grew up addressing and answering him “Yes, sir” or “No, sir.” At the time of his death on January 20th, 1987, he had 11 grandchildren. Another eight were to follow, among them my three, so my kids missed out on calling him “Sir.”
Legacy is an interesting word. It suggests a “thing” with concrete contours and definite dimensions. Yet a legacy is not concrete, at least for most of us. My father’s legacy is a difficult thing to trace precisely. It lives in each of his children as a certain way of looking at the world, both analytical and systematic–breaking it down and seeing it in totality. Being in it and yet not of it. Loving its beauty while recognizing its darkness. It spreads to others who knew him well for his seriousness in work and his occasional and surprising playfulness in other settings. For several of his colleagues, it was the work he did behind the scenes to end the Soviet Empire in the Cold War, almost none of which was understood by his family. Who knows how my father actually changed the world for the better?
All I know is that he did.
The most important things I’ve ever said remain to this day the stories and reflections I gathered from my family and placed in his eulogy, which I offered eight days after his sudden death of a heart attack. Two record snowstorms in the days thereafter delayed his burial at Arlington National Cemetery for over a week. I have copied the eulogy here below to “publish” it on Father’s Day 2010. It’s longer than a blog should be, and too long for me to ask you to read it. But I offer it again for Dad and Sir.
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I have been asked to represent my family in a brief tribute to my father, Martin F. Sullivan, who died last week. I am honored to do it.
First, on behalf of my mother, I would like to thank you all for attending this funeral Mass and for all the acts and expressions of kindness we have received from you over this long and trying week. I’m sure my father, who hated delays, rejoices that we are finally here.
Martin Sullivan was a good man, and a loving husband, father and grandfather. He was not a complicated man. He held simple beliefs and looked squarely at life through clear eyes unburdened with doubt or fear. While not complicated, he was complex — with an Irish temperament, a marvelous, questing intellect, and a wide range of interests. But his essence was simplicity, and of the many choices God provides us in life, my father selected only a few of the best things.
Rather than speak about what he did in life, I’d like to try to tell you why he lived the way he did. The motivations are important; the results speak for themselves.
My father was motivated first by his faith, a gift from God developed early in his life by his parents, later to be honed by the Jesuits at Xavier and Fordham. The Jesuits have an expression: “Ad majoram Dei gloriam” which commits them literally to “The greater glory of God.” This was the philosophy that formed my father’s basic approach to life. I’m sure he measured himself against this standard as he knelt each day in prayer.
My father was a devout Catholic. Over the years he contributed greatly to the Church. He particularly loved the work of the Little Sisters of the Poor and the Catholic foreign missions. He also loved and supported this church, St. James, and the school across the street that all of his eight children attended at various times over the years
His religion was his faith. He believed in “God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord and Savior, and in the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son” and who so filled my father with the spirit of faith. These beliefs were with him throughout his days with us, and at “the hour of his death.”
Faith was his foundation. Upon it he built his life’s work over 45 years in the Army Artillery and, later, with the BDM Corporation. His drive and ambition were the result of an intrinsic commitment to excellence in everything he undertook. “Do your best,” he would tell us…”the angels can’t do any better.”
He set tough standards for himself, and for others. He distrusted the easy answer, the ready response, the glib explanation. He challenged the conventional wisdom, at work, and at home. My brothers and sisters and I learned this early in life through lively discussions around the dinner table. I can tell you that, as a child, his standards of excellence were sometimes difficult to live up to. But in them his message was this: “Those to whom much is given, much is expected.” And he knew how much we had been given.
His eight children are obvious evidence that my father was an optimist. His life and his career were marked by hope in the future. As St. Paul wrote: “There are three things that last forever — faith, hope and love…” and Dad agreed with Paul that the greatest of these is love, for the single greatest joy and most profound inspiration of my father’s life was the love he shared with my mother, Elizabeth.
His childhood friend and college sweetheart, she was the love of his life, his one and only, his “Best Bet.” They were man and wife for 44 years, and every day of their marriage provided a shining example of Christian love, marked by charity, forbearance, and forgiveness. Their love was manifested as a quiet, unspoken bond of real compassion and affection. It truly was the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, that they accepted and passed on to all of us.
With my mother he also accepted and rejoiced in God’s blessing of eight healthy children. The fortunes my father made were not the type held in bank vaults, but rather they are captured in the photographs of us and held within the many picture frames he had at his home.
His children and grandchildren were a great source of pride and love in his life. We all remember Dad and the things he loved: weekend mornings in his robe at the kitchen table, listening with pride of our accomplishments. The wonderful enthusiasm he had…for Christmas ornaments…a good Manhattan or an Old Fashioned — “activated fruit juice” he called it. His old, tired Volkswagens…his books…and rain on the roof as he drifted off to sleep.
He taught us his religion, and prayed we’d be given faith. He held up his standards, and demanded our best efforts. He showed us how to love, and he loved us all.
What a family he had! Think of it — twenty years of teenagers! He told me once that with children, parents have about ten years of control and, if they’re lucky, another three or four years of influence. After that, children are essentially on their own, guided by the values instilled mainly by the example, rather than the lectures, of their parents. In time he let each one of us go, reminding us that our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost, and to take care of them.
And so now it is time for us to let him go. He would want us to take heart, and reflect on the words of another old soldier — “People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. As long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then and then only are you grown old — and then, indeed, as the ballad says, you just fade away.”
Last week Martin Sullivan walked out of this life when his heart finally stopped. It was a heart filled throughout his life with faith, courage, and love. May he now enjoy eternal rest within the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
BUILT TO LEAD 