Vernon Sullivan spent much of his adult life working to help people and to improve Arnold, the town he quickly came to love after moving there as a young man, said his friends and family.
Sullivan died Aug. 29 at age 79 following complications from COPD and anemia, said his son, Steven Sullivan of Washington.
“He did so much and gave so much to different causes,” said Jim Chellew, former superintendent of the Fox C-6 School District, where Sullivan worked as director of facilities before his retirement.
Sullivan also served on the Fox Board of Education and the Arnold City Council for several years.
“He felt a sense of responsibility to take care of his community,” Chellew said.
Vernon Sullivan moved to Arnold as a young man.
State Rep. Phil Amato, a former Arnold city councilman, said he and Sullivan had been friends for 47 years, and the two worked on several community projects together, including establishing the Jefferson County Library system and bringing a tornado warning system and the Recreation Center to Arnold.
The two also served on the Arnold Food Pantry board for many years.
“He (Sullivan) was the greatest fundraiser for charity this community’s ever seen,” Amato said.
Sullivan organized golf tournaments to raise funds for scholarships to benefit Fox and Seckman high school students, and those tournaments brought in about $340,000 over the 10 years they were held, according to an article published several years ago on the Arnold website about Sullivan’s volunteerism.
“He wanted to get the kids who weren’t going to otherwise get scholarships, the kids who were B students,” Amato said.
“Over the years, he has raised more than a million dollars for kids, students, schools, libraries, the Arnold Recreation Center, the Arnold Food Pantry and a lot more,” the Arnold website article reported.
Sullivan headed the Friends of Fox committee, which ran a campaign for a $1.25 tax increase voters overwhelmingly approved while Chellew was superintendent.
“He helped put that campaign together, which was extraordinary and very successful,” Chellew said. “He was an extraordinary man in so many ways.
“There was nothing you could ask him to do that he wouldn’t help you with. He was a good steward of his community.”
Arnold Mayor Ron Counts said Sullivan helped make Arnold a better place to work and live.
“I don’t know anybody whose heart was more true than him about keeping our city moving in the right direction,” Counts said. “He always had great ideas. He wanted to put his points across, but he was always there to work with a team to better the community.
“I truly loved the guy. Vernon was a kind person. He was very generous. He never could say no to anybody.”
Amato said Sullivan was a loyal and supportive friend.
“My heart is absolutely broken,” he said.
Steven said his father grew up under tough circumstances in Greenville and worked hard to build a better life for himself and his family, which included his late wife, Glenda; two other sons: David Duncan of Arnold and Brad (Cassie) Duncan of Imperial; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Steven said Sullivan’s father was an alcoholic and his family was “extremely poor.”
“He didn’t talk about it much until about a year ago. He was confiding in me and told me about him going hungry,” Steven said. “That’s why he was so passionate about the Arnold Food Pantry. He knows what it’s like to be hungry. There were times he had to go fish as a kid so he’d have something to eat, so later, he would never eat fish. He couldn’t stand it because of that experience.”
When Sullivan was in sixth grade, he ended up in foster care, and later he wound up in Arnold after getting a scholarship to play basketball at St. Louis Community College, his son said.
He didn’t get to finish college, though, because in 1964, he was drafted into the Army, Steven said.
In his interview for the Arnold website article, Sullivan said he was trained as a specialist C-5 above the rank of private first class and landed in Stuttgart, Bavaria, with the U.S. Seventh Army as part of the U.S. Army Europe-North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces, adding that he worked in intelligence and had a “top secret” clearance.
“It was the highest clearance for NATO, but it wasn’t that glamorous,” he said. “I spent most of my time gathering information, reading and writing intelligence reports for my commander, Capt. Harold Gallagher. He sent the reports upstairs to Commanding Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe-NATO.”
Steven said his father was blessed with “the luck of the Irish” and didn’t get sent to Vietnam.
He was honorably discharged in 1968.
After a stint in sales for a janitorial supplies company, Sullivan went to work for the Fox district.
Steven, a Fox High School graduate, said Sullivan was a good father.
“He was very supportive and was at all my sporting events and things through high school. I’m a musician. He didn’t understand music. He was tone deaf, but he was very supportive of my music stuff.”
Steven said his father taught him valuable life lessons.
“He was an incredibly hard worker, and I learned work ethic from him, and I learned how to talk to people. He didn’t always say, ‘I love you,’ but he showed it.”
Sullivan was well liked, Steven added.
“His visitation was supposed to start at 4 p.m. but so many people were waiting, we opened early, and it was a constant, steady stream all night,” he said. “It was so nice hearing people talking about Dad, what he meant to them, the work he did.”
Steven said he was particularly surprised to see staff members from the Pasta House and Arby’s restaurants, which his father frequented, show up to pay their respects.
“I preached at the funeral, and I talked about his childhood,” said Steven, a longtime pastor. “I was trying to show what motivated him to do the things he did. He didn’t want other people to live what he lived through. Some people go through that and retreat into themselves; others, like him, fight. I like to say he was a rags to middle class story.”
Amato said the results of Sullivan’s work to help those who live in Jefferson County will live on.
“I hope when people see this story about Vern, who did so much for this community, that they take a few minutes to read it and think about what a guy like him meant to this community. Vern Sullivan did not think Arnold, Mo., was just where he lived. It was his home.”