Dear Hearts,
February 11th is the 97th anniversary of the birth of Anna Rita Sullivan, Order of Preachers, daughter of Lefty and Anna; sister to Jim, Bob and Margaret, Aunt to 19 of us and our spouses, friend to so many. Aunt Anna Rita was a Dominican nun, servant of the poor, epitome of motherhood to literally thousands of little ones, encourager of immigrants, forgiver of fools, one who loved, always and everywhere.
She was born in Chicago and died in Phoenix on August 18, 2006, in the 62nd year of her Religious Profession, surrounded by much of her family. She is buried in the Adrian Dominican Sisters Cemetery alongside Aunt Margaret.
I have such fond memories of the Aunties coming to visit us in Munster. They would drive up in their yellow Plymouth Dart and come up the front walkway with their habits flowing in the breeze. It amazed me how they confounded my dad, Big Sully, by serving refugees in El Salvador who were trying to re-establish life in a new and strange place in the early 1980s. They lived and worked in danger and it drove dad crazy not to be able to protect them.
Aunt Anna Rita, along with Aunt Margaret, served the Catholic community in Danville, Arkansas, working for ten years to build St. Andrew Catholic Church there. She educated me in nutrition when I had gestational diabetes in the 1990s, and counseled me through genetic testing when I was diagnosed with breast cancer the first time in 2004. She was so smart and so caring.
You all know the story of her "meeting the train" when Big Sully came home to Union Station in Chicago, after the fourth telegram saying he would arrive. The first three, over a three year period, all stated that he had been shot down (which he had) and that he was believed to be dead. So no one believed the fourth one.
Except Anna Rita. She met the train. And the 200 pound athlete, now seriously wounded, weighing 130 pounds, jammed down real hard with what we now know was post-traumatic stress, got off the train, hollow-eyed, alone. And there was his sister, willing to have her heart broken again on the chance that he would be there. He (and she) never forgot that, and held it like the precious bond it is, between them forever more.
Happy Birthday in heaven, Auntie. Thanks for your goodness, your example, your kindness and tolerance, and advice, and your endless love.
God bless us and save us and keep us from harm.
Love, Patty
From Jim:
She wrote me, some 27 years ago, urging me to ask the Army to consider finding out what a gecko has on its feet to allow it to walk up window panes. Then she stated that she thought we should be able to use ultra-lubricity polymer (She has Master's degrees in chemistry and nutrition) to spray on the battlefield so the enemy will slip down, and we could have the gecko substance on our troops' boots so they would not slip. This way, we could overpower them without having to kill them, in certain small, isolated, tactically appropriate settings. Today, the U.S. Army has developed both of these things.
Whitey felt he must make a clean breast of things and confessed to her that while he was Chief of Staff of Fort Benning, the Army's Infantry home, he arrested Bishop Romero and all the protesters who were demonstrating against us teaching the Central and South Americans warfare at the School of the Americas at Benning.
Whitey, and his general, fed, sheltered and protected these prisoners, and treated them with due process, but Whitey knew the Aunties were on the side of the protesters, illegal immigrants, poor people, underprivileged and everybody else who suffers, so he confessed and, I think, was willing to take the judgment.
Well, of course, none was forthcoming.
I think Anna Rita said, "Would you like some lunch, Whitey?" She loved Whitey very much--he also loved her and spent a lot of time out at Adrian, fixing her and her buddies' computer systems.
Whitey and I visited her at Adrian every couple of months for the last six years of her life, and everybody came through when Aunt Margaret was dying, to go up and see them- we had some great trips together. I think Tim saved my Catholicism on one of those trips.
The Aunties provided the catalyst for many things during those last years.
That first night when Margaret was beginning to die, I rushed blindly into Detroit in the middle of the night, upset and broken-hearted. I didn't know exactly what to do, so I called Whitey, and he got up out of the rack and came to the airport and drove us 60 miles to the Mother House, and we sat up that first night, with the family.
That was the start of a beautiful friendship between Whitey and Auntie Nan, and she bonded to him as only she could do. They had a specially close and warm relationship, and she considered Whitey one of her Irish-Basque-Polish-Lebanese-Spanish-Welsh-Scottish nephews.
He insisted on carrying her on his internet account for years, and rode steady herd on her and the other nuns' cyber capability, keeping them going in all weathers. He was deeply affected by her, still talks about her and quotes her as an exemplar of principled behavior, often.
