‘Sully’ to be missed

When Pat Sullivan ended a 38-year career at The Lethbridge Herald in 1999, he said he wouldn’t miss the work one bit.

But he’d definitely miss the people.

I didn’t even arrive at The Herald for almost three more years, but “Sully” was a legend. He hired Randy Jensen, who’d worked in The Herald sports department as long as I could remember. And since Jensen is the biggest reason I had a career at The Herald, that made Sully a largerthan-life figure.

I met Sullivan in my second year here, and he was exactly as I’d imagined. He looked like a newspaperman.

Actually, he looked like a retired newspaperman, judging by the stressless lift in his eyes and the restored youth in his manner. Sully the person was exactly as promised. He told stories about the grand old days of newspapers, the mischief of a full newsroom and the biggest names in sports from around the world and locally.

Sullivan died Monday, and for all the people I interviewed who would say “Boy, I remember Pat Sullivan, boy he was a character” — he certainly was.

He started at The Herald at 18 and left at 56. He began in 1961 and left at the twilight of the most tumultuous century in history. To hear him say it, he started at The Herald after a brief career “discovering I was never going to be a manager at Woolworths.”

He worked in accounting but before selling his soul to the sales department, Don Pilling hired him in sports. As a sports reporter, Sully interviewed the greatest athletes of the age. His biggest thrill, he said, was interviewing track hero Jesse Owens.

As sports editor, he covered the fledgling careers of Bryan Trottier and Steve Tambellini, who he judged to be the two best juniors he ever saw. He also watched Brian Sutter lead the way for a family dynasty to settle into Lethbridge’s history.

Sully didn’t stop working for the paper in 1999, however. I got a call one night in 2009 from John Chapman. His friend and an old newspaperman named Pat Sullivan harangued him into calling me because, apparently, Chapman and his Labrador Bailey, pulled a young girl and her mother from a frozen lake. When Sully heard, he told Chapman to call us.

Stories about Sullivan are still circulated. He was sent out for a paper stretcher, as were all rookies back then. He would cover a phone receiver in black ink and then call that desk, spreading the ink across ears for decades. He would play office-chair hockey and whether as entertainment editor or sports editor or sports reporter, was a newspaperman through and through.

Better people than me will write about Sully in the days to come but his impact on The Herald and the sports community in Lethbridge is undeniable.

He’s been dearly missed since the day he retired in 1999, only appearing to us on golf courses and at an occasional staff party.

Sully will be missed even more now.