Tom Sullivan brought dramatic changes to Trinidad State Junior College during his 19-year tenure.
Sullivan, who was president from 1972 to 1991, died of liver disease Jan. 16 at his home in Pasco, Wash. He was 80.
During his presidency, Sullivan got computers for the 82-year-old college, saw three new buildings built, established an endowment fund and broadened the vocational and fine arts departments of the school.
The student center has been named for him and he has been nominated for the Trinidad State Junior College Foundation Hall of Fame.
“He had high standards and high expectations, and he was pretty upfront about them,” said John Tarabino of Trinidad, former vice president of administrative services under Sullivan.
Those beliefs “didn’t always result in his winning popularity contests nor endear him to some of the staff,” Tarabino wrote in nominating Sullivan for the Hall of Fame. “But the institution always came first in his thinking.”
“He thought the college was an entry place for rural kids to continue their education and that the college was the economic engine of the community,” said his son, Shaun Sullivan, of Denver.
Sullivan went to Trinidad soon after junior colleges were included in the state college system, Tarabino said. Sullivan was able to stabilize the school while also promoting growth.
Sullivan was so focused on the college that during several road trips the two made to Denver, Tarabino tried to get Sullivan to talk about something besides the school.
“I’d point out a sunrise or a herd of antelope and Tom would say, ‘Yeah,’ and then go on with a conversation about the college,” Tarabino recalled.
“The greatest compliment my dad could give you was that you were a hard-worker,” his son said.
For several years, Sullivan got the students and staff busy on Arbor Day to plant trees on the campus, said his daughter, Molly King, of Pasco, Wash.
Thomas W. Sullivan was born March 31, 1927, in Pasco, Wash., served in the U.S. Navy and earned a bachelor’s degree at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Wash.
He married Mary Clyde, a fellow teacher, in 1954. She preceded him in death.
Sullivan taught junior high school in Richland, Wash., and high school in Pasco before earning a master’s degree in guidance counseling at Columbia University. He was principal at two elementary schools in Washington and then earned his doctorate in educational administration at the University of Northern Colorado, Fort Collins. He was dean of instruction in 1968 at Aims Community College in Greeley.
Sullivan was a good fundraiser, said King, but he also “knew how to get the right people on the foundation board so things would get done.”
With his family he was a “good listener,” said his daughter, Mary Margaret Meyer of Richland, Wash.
“You might not always get the answer you wanted, but you knew he’d always listen.”
In addition to his daughters and son, he is survived by five grandchildren; his sister, Patricia Roach, of Pasco; and brother, John Sullivan, of Brunswick, Maine.
Virginia Culver: 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com
Other Deaths
Anna “Jeanne” Layton, 77, a Utah librarian who was fired in 1979 for refusing to pull Don DeLillo’s first novel, died Saturday.
Layton refused to take “Americana” off the shelves of the Davis County Library, arguing that patrons could decide whether they wanted to read it. County officials said the book was obscene and fired Layton. But she was reinstated after taking her dismissal to court.
“It’s not the library’s role to determine choices for adults,” Layton said in 1990 as she prepared to retire after 30 years. “It’s important for the library to serve everyone in the community, not just select groups.”
Layton received a number of awards, including the Intellectual Freedom Award from the Mountain Plains Library Association.
…
Miles Lerman, 88, who fought against the Nazis in Poland and later helped found the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., died Tuesday at his home in Philadelphia.
Lerman was a member of a prosperous family whose flour mills were seized by the Nazis. Lerman escaped from a slave labor camp and fought the Nazis with other partisans for nearly two years in the forests of Poland.
“Our job was to raise havoc, to raise hell with them and survive,” he once told The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Lerman and his wife, Rosalie, immigrated to New York City in 1947. He worked as a grocery-warehouse clerk in Brooklyn, N.Y., then had a chicken farm in Vineland, N.J. He later started a home heating-oil business that grew into a major distributorship, and invested in real estate.
Lerman was involved in the Holocaust Museum from the planning stages. Appointed to its governing board by President Carter, he was reappointed by the next three presidents. He was the board’s chairman emeritus.
