Interview with Michael Sullivan, History 150 Spring 2023, Conducted by Cassidy Wagner, March 15, 2023.

Overview of Interview: 

The years after World War II marked a significant change for the ‘modern’ family. Many veterans were looking for an easier life for their families, moving away from busy cities like New York and choosing a more family-orientated lifestyle. It is worth noting that family dynamics do not have to follow traditional norms, and there are many non-traditional families in the United States.

A healthy family does not necessarily require a mother and father, as Michael Sullivan’s upbringing proves. Sullivan was raised by his older sister and brother-in-law after his parents died when he was only 15 years old. He thought of his sister as a second mother and went to live with her on Long Island.

Sullivan also experienced the segregation of African Americans in the United States. Before moving to Long Island, he lived in a neighborhood with no African Americans. Segregation separated different cultures into different neighborhoods in many places across the country like New York City. As a result, many people like Sullivan had limited exposure to other cultures and ethnicities during their childhood. That changed when he decided to go to college in Kansas. He learned about different cultures and people and this opened his mind to new people and their lives. He has been very accepting of people and their culture since attending a small college. 

Biography: My Grandfather, Michael Sullivan was born on Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, 1941. He grew up in Brooklyn with his 4 older siblings and Irish immigrant parents. Being the youngest of 4 siblings he went to a private catholic school in Brooklyn. His sister was the second caretaker of the family. When he was 15 years old his father passed away and shortly after his mother died. He immediately went to live with his sister and her husband in Long Island. The transition from living in a large city to going to a newly developed place was something he had some challenges adjusting to. He later went to a small college in the midwest called, Saint Mary of the Plains in Dodge City, Kansas. He met many new people with different cultures and backgrounds that have helped him interact with people throughout his life.

During the 1950s my Grandfather was living in Long Island, New York. This period was when many families and World War II veterans looking to start families moved from New York City to a simpler life. Levittown, New York was the first set of identical homes and was the first idea of suburban living. A soldier named William Levitt brought the idea of affordable living to his father and his father bought 4,000 acres of land in Long Island to build the first suburb. (planetizen.com)

World War II was occurring when my Grandfather was a young child living in New York, City. He explains in the interview that one of his earliest memories of childhood was how the city reacted to the war. They had air raid drills and everyone handled them very efficiently. Once the sirens would go off, everyone would shut their windows, turn off all lights, and cover their cars. Many civilians volunteered to be air raid wardens. The country was very prepared for any possible attack. (rosietheriveter.net)

CW: While growing up in New York City at a young age, did you have any experiences that stood out to you?

Mr. Sullivan: Well, that’s a hard question in the sense of any experience, I guess, was an interesting experience when you’re a young person. So can you be a little more specific?

CW: Let’s say something maybe historical that happened while you were living?

Mr. Sullivan: My birthday probably is the most historical of all of the things that happened as a child, I was born on 7, December 1941, which is the anniversary and The Day of Infamy, Pearl Harbor. So obviously, I don’t remember anything to do with that day, but I grew up as a child during World War II, the start of it. So the day I was born Pearl Harbor was attacked and I grew up through World War II.  Pearl Harbor was attacked and I grew up through World War II and now obviously, as a child, your memory doesn’t really start that I can say, I remember World War II, no, I can’t. 

Mr. Sullivan: I can remember certain things about it that probably lasted after the war, that were leftovers from it. Things that you would see in your home that say, “jeez, today, why would somebody have two shades in their window?” Growing up in the city, there were air raid drills, and as a little child was probably was more scary than anything else and the shades that I’m talking about were blackout shades that would be drawn down at night, so that if anyone had a light on, it would be seen from the outside, and you would have somebody knocking at your door, like a policeman telling you that you should not have that light shining so that it can be seen. And you would say, well, “what were you hiding from?” well, it was the possibility, obviously, of an air raid attack, and you didn’t want to give the pilots any view of a target. 

Mr. Sullivan: Obviously, we didn’t have anything like that thank God happen in New York nor anywhere else in the United States, other than Pearl Harbor. So that was that was something that lasted, people that didn’t throw their shades away. The day after the war, they still were in the house, there was rationing. That, you know, I wasn’t driving a car, but I do recall, member people lining up on lines and having to have a little card that they put in the windshield of the car, which authorized them to have a certain amount of fuel purchased. And a lot of that was because of the war effort it was all kept very tight and not allowed to just anybody go fill up anytime they want.

Mr. Sullivan: So those are very vague memories of you know, my memory probably doesn’t start until I’m 7 or 8 years old. And then you’re, you know, Cowboys and Indians were the big thing as a child. I do recall my seventh birthday receiving something that say well, “why do you remember your seventh?” and because it was a special gift. It was a Gene Autry, holster and gun because then I was an official cowboy so every little boy living in Brooklyn wanted to live in Texas or Oklahoma and see horses but so that I do remember. 

Mr. Sullivan: The atmosphere in the city at that time was I lived in a very nice neighborhood it was considered probably not where the rich rich people lived, but it wasn’t where the poor poor people lived. I lived in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. And it was pretty much the neighborhoods in those days were focused around ethnic [ethinicity]. So you saw that even as a child that the neighborhood I grew up in, there were no blacks [African Americans]. They were mostly Irish, German, and Norwegian. People of those ethnic backgrounds, but to never see a black person in that area. And it was all of Brooklyn was kind of broken up into little sections of where people live based on their whether they were Irish, German, or whatever. Nice. So what other question?

CW: So transitioning to when you started living with your sister? Um, how common was it back then to be raised by people other than your parents?

Mr. Sullivan: Well, that was that was an interesting time. I lost my father first, and that was in 1956. And then it was just myself and my mother living in this house. And then, a year or so a year and a half later, my mother died. And so now I was, you know, what, 15/14-year-old boy that was without parents. However, we were a very, very close-knit family and my sister was always the senior person in the family. She was the oldest, and my sister always lived with my parents. She didn’t marry until she was older and so I had really almost two mothers, my real mother, who was there always for me, and then when she wasn’t around, my sister kind of took over.

Mr. Sullivan: So the transition to go and live with my sister and her husband was not hard for me, because I was very close to my sister. I had gotten to know my brother-in-law very well, because there was a period of time that he lived with us in Brooklyn when they were transferred from Minnesota back to New York before they bought their first home. They lived in Brooklyn with us. So I got to know my brother-in-law during that period of time and then, immediately after my mother died, I was the next day literally sitting in my sister’s house and I was very comfortable with that and so, I transition from Brooklyn to Long Island. I found that to be a big transition, all together different life.

Mr. Sullivan: I was used to the city I was used to buses, cars, trains, [and] Subway, pretty used to moving around by myself on my bicycle [and] could go pretty much anywhere safely without any concerns of safety. That was never a factor growing up in the city have some type of harm coming to me, I mean I would take my bicycle and pedal as far as Coney Island. My mother wasn’t always aware that I did that but, there was no crime in the sense of something happening to you as you see today. Police were highly respected. You knew your policemen growing up in the city who knew who the policeman that walked the beat in your area and he pretty well knew who you were by name. And they also had what they call the Police League, the PAL. And the PAL allowed you to play in sports where the police were the ones that were the coaches, they were the umpires, so a great level of respect for a police officer, unlike what you see today.

Mr. Sullivan: But moving to Long Island was altogether different. Long Island was in the midst of an explosion of World War II Vets. Where all of these individuals and Korean vets were heading out of the city to start families returning from wars. And Long Island was a virgin area of used to be nothing but farmland and the very first Levittown [Long Island, New York] which was a model for what you’d call new housing developments, which were unheard of where people lived in the city, everything was old, there were buildings that had been there a long time this was brand new homes, brand new streets brand new lawns [my dog interrupted :)]  You would say what is “what is a lawn?” because growing up in the city, you didn’t see lawns. 

Mr. Sullivan: So when I say it was a huge transition. It was not only that, there was no transportation, where you could freely go in the city anywhere using buses, the trolley cars, [or] the subway, Long Island was you’re very limited as a teenager, you waited until you were 16 and, at 16 you could get a driver’s license. Where living in the city, you really didn’t need a driver’s license, nor did you have any yearning to get one because not very few people had cars. Why cars were expensive, and they were difficult to park and difficult to maintain and have. So most people relied on public transportation, but when you moved out to Long Island, that was none of [that] transportation other than the Long Island Railroad existed, and the only way off Long Island at that time was the Long Island Expressway had not been built. So you had roads that were old. And no, it was a car. So if you didn’t have a car, you weren’t going anywhere. Moving in with my sister that was interesting, too, because she was in the midst of having her own family and, so all of a sudden, along came nieces and nephews and were born and I was already a teenager living in the house and new babies were arriving 

CW: Going off of that were there any like struggles with living with all like a full house with five young kids?

Mr. Sullivan: Yeah, the struggles were interesting. No, not in the sense of living. At the final number, we’re at 5. It really was not the problem. As a teenage boy, it was more of authority. And I was feeling now approaching 16/17. And I resented having Joe Carroll who was my brother-in-law, directing me and giving me orders and so I would rebel against that but, I quickly adapted to it and accepted Joe as a father and as somebody that was looking out for the best things that could happen to me.

Mr. Sullivan: I had a brother say to me once “the best thing that ever happened to you was mom and dad died.”  I kind of looked at him with a stare and go “what do you mean?” And he said “you were able to get out of the city. Go to a whole new world. And that world was the new world that was exploding in front of you. You were exposed things that you educated people, people with college degrees, neighbors with educated, the people you were living with had college degrees where living in the city you were kind of not seeing that.”

Mr. Sullivan: So I thought it was a hard thing he said, but I realized what he said was probably true that the mom and dad moving on and leaving me with my sister and my brother-in-law, who was highly educated, he was a lawyer, he was an FBI agent, went on to become a Senior Vice President, in a company helped me a lot in exposing me to the world. He challenged me all the time, that probably was the thing that would infuriate me the most is I would say something and he would say, “Well, why do you say that? How do you back up that statement? What is the fact?” So he would practice his law practice on me and as a teenager, that would annoy me but, what he was doing was trying to put into me a sense of, Well, did you research that statement before you said it. So, that was very helpful and grooming me for the rest of my life, which I probably would not have had if I had remained living with my mom and dad who had no college education, properly, very little high school education, and had not had the experiences of the world, other than you know, we thank them for what they did imagine leaving Ireland and going on a boat to an unknown country and arriving with nothing and yet, coming away with a family of five and having two sons become Catholic priests. My mother was very proud of that. So it’s not to say that they were lacking, but they didn’t have the education. So I was fortunate to wind up with a family that was highly educated and helped me in my education to seek out better things.

CW: Moving on to education. So growing up in a city, and town why did you decide to go to a small rural college?

Mr. Sullivan: Well, remember, I’ve said there was this authority factor, I reached a point probably at 17 or 18 years old, where once again, I just, I wanted to be, I wanted to do what I wanted to do and I a lot too, even going back in those days. I, I transitioned from bouncing, I went to a very good school. I mean, my high school was one of the top high schools in New York City. It was a Catholic High School. I got [a] good education there. But maybe I didn’t hit the books as hard as I should have. There was a lot going on in my life, having lost my parents transitioning into this new environment, and meeting new people, new friends, [and] new guys to hang out with. I probably didn’t focus enough on having the grades and all to get into top-name good schools. I also had a yearning to go on my own and go wherever I had no, I like to travel. I liked the idea. When this school came up, I said, “Hell, why not?”

Mr. Sullivan: and so I wound up going out to the Midwest, which in a way was another fortunate step in my life. It really, it was equal to leaving the city and going to Long Island and leaving New York and going to the Midwest was an education in itself. I met people and that helped me in my career. It helped me amazingly, to understand different people. “The East is East than the West is West.” and I heard that said many times by people that lived out in the Midwest and I got to see the personalities and the makeup of people and, years later, that helped me and my work of being able to handle people of all different denominations and backgrounds. So I did find four years living in the Midwest, going to school in the Midwest, and understanding the people from that part of the country that they are different in one way. They’re great Americans. They love the country. But certain priorities aren’t the same as the priorities that people are living in New York or in Washington, DC and I gained a lot from having that experience and don’t regret it. It helped me a lot.

CW: So would you say there were like, big adjustments or were there any adjustments to living in that town? Living in Kansas?

Mr. Sullivan: Yes. The very first adjustment was the first day I arrived. Here, picture this young man 17/18 years old. By myself, no one drove me to college, [and] no one went with me. I had a suitcase and got on an airplane. It was the second time I had ever flown. And I landed in Dodge City, Kansas and when I got off that airplane, I smelled something I had never smelled in my life going, “Oh my God, what’s that odor?”, well the airport there happens to be smack dab next to the cattle yards. So what I was smelling was the cattle yard’s manure smell, which was the first time I had ever witnessed anything like that. And went, “Oh my God, these peoples have smelled this all the time?” Well, obviously, they don’t the airport happened to be out where the title yard is but that was my first experience that this is going to be a little bit different. I then met people that you know, had a little bit of a different accent. They recognized my accent immediately as being different but I picked up on theirs’ also and once again it was getting to understand or relate to people how they speak, [and] what their personalities are alike.

Mr. Sullivan: So yes, my first Thanksgiving, I didn’t come home, it was too far to travel. It was too expensive. But a very, very kind family [a] classmate that I got to meet brought me home to his home in Tipton, Kansas. So where in the world was Tipton, Kansas? While that’s what it was like to me, and I saw things at Thanksgiving table that I had never seen before. I went pheasant hunting, I was given a shotgun. I had never held a gun in my life and I went out and I was walked with them the morning of Thanksgiving where the family would go pheasant hunting. I had no idea what a pheasant looked like, that was another experience. All of a sudden, I saw this beautiful, beautiful, colorful bird in front of me and people yelling, “shoot him!” and I had a hard time doing that. I said “this is a beautiful bird. Why would you want to shoot him?” Well, there was the New Yorker and me and the Kansas people going “you shoot him because we’re gonna have it for dinner.” and, I experienced that night pheasant which I had never eaten before in my life. 

Mr. Sullivan: So every time and Kansas there were experiences that were different people, towns, customs, [and]even the beer would say “Oh, okay are 18 years old you’re drinking beer.” I tried. first time I’d ever seen a bar that had a beer tap and next to it another tap. And you’d say what’s the other tap for? And they said well let’s for red beer. And I said “Red beer. What are you talking about?” They said “Oh, you’re in Kansas, you pour yourself a beer and then you go to the tap and that’s tomato juice” and I said “Tomato juice and beer?” it was very popular back then. So I had another life experience. So, beer with tomato juice in it which I don’t think anybody back East that I knew of my age was drinking that type of beer. I got to meet a young lady that my freshman year that I was very much infatuated with and I was very much interested in she lived in Wichita, Kansas, and I was in Dodge City, Kansas. She was studying to be a nurse. She went to the same college I did. I think my family back East started to get very nervous about that relationship, because they thought, “Oh, my God, he’s going to wind marrying a girl from the Midwest, and we’ll never see him again.” Well, I then met her mother and the mother was the one that put the saying in my head, and she said it very politely. East is East and the West is West, and the twain probably will never meet and that stuck with me. I knew this girl for four years. Nothing ever materialized out of it. It was harmless. But it was always some new experience. 

CW: You’re talking about the culture from the East and the West. And you’ve pretty much explained this was my next question, which was, can you explain the culture of Dodge City, Kansas,

Mr. Sullivan: At that time Dodge City was a town that was growing, even though it goes its history goes way back to, you know, the days of Wyatt Earp and all of that Gunsmoke originated the show in Dodge City, Kansas and anybody from the east thought of, you know, that everybody walked down the street with a gun and, but no Dodge City at the time, had two or three colleges there. It had a very big culture center there and had it was just like any other town or city that you would come across. I had a downtown area that had people living outside a little ways. It was not like you were on a covered wagon or anything like that. It had pretty much the big town to go to from Dodge City, if you wanted to see a larger city was Wichita and occasionally I would go up to Wichita or on a weekend for sporting events. Kansas City was a little bit further and very seldom would I make my way to Kansas City, Dodge City going west, you would go into Colorado and and to see the beautiful mountains in Colorado. I got to and I would do that. When they were I only would come home for Christmas and come home for the summer. And any other holiday or any other times we would have off. I would travel through the Midwest. And so I got to go to Oklahoma, Texas, [and] Nebraska. I actually worked one summer, on a farm a wheat, not on a farm but on a what was it called? It was the machine that cut the wheat fields.[Combine Harvester] and how they did it is they would move from Oklahoma ad all the way up to Nebraska. And they would cut the farmers wheat fields for them and charge them and then the farmer would sell that crop and I actually got to work on doing that and traveled from Oklahoma all the way up to Nebraska and got to meet the people of those areas.

CW: So my last question going back to talking about family and your sister and your nieces and nephews and your brother-in-law. Do you think that family should be the most important thing in your life?

Mr. Sullivan: Oh, absolutely. Family is, it’s the root of at all. I mean, it’s where you in fact, you know some of the work that I do today I use a saying that, believe it or not. Moms instilled in us from when we were very small, right from wrong. So I don’t care how old you are. When you go to do something stupid in life, all of a sudden there’s this little voice that appears in the back of your head and it goes. “I don’t think Mom would be very happy with me if I was to do this.” And here I’m 81 years old and I still use that line and talking with people that I am talking to about having to go through a clearance with the government said, you know, Hey, “Mom instilled in us something that just is there”. Some people call it a conscience. I call it mom training. So to me, family is really the whole thing. Your brothers and sisters and it’s everything. 

If I answered your question?

CW: Thank you for participating.

Mr. Sullivan: Is that good enough?

 

CW: Yes, it’s perfect thank you!

 

Bibliography:

Mathosian, Mark. “What Is Levittown?” Planetizen, https://www.planetizen.com/definition/levittown.