The ADN Honored Mayor Sullivan on Sunday, 9-27-09 With a Longer Story and Obituary

Point of Personal Privilege.  Our dear readers know that at times your author takes the liberty of honoring a friend.  Today, all Anchorage Citizens with a memory of several decades will appreciate the contributions of George M. Sullivan, whose great spirit passed on to heaven last night.  Readers will be able to explore George’s rich personal and family history and legacy on an excellent Wikipedia page and, undoubtedly, ADN, KTUU and others will run many respectful stories.  I cannot claim to have been thought of as a close friend but I can claim to have been a devoted fan of George, his wife, Margaret and their extraordinary array of accomplished offspring, including Mayor Dan Sullivan (NGP Photo, 3-17-07, St. Patrick’s Day).

George served as part-time Mayor of the City of Anchorage from 1967 to 1975, partly overlapping terms of other fine Anchorage leaders, Borough Mayors John Asplund and Jack Roderick.  In the early 1970’s with guidance from my mentor, adman Conn Murray, I assisted in orchestrating a campaign that would merge the Anchorage City and Borough governments into the Municipality of Anchorage and create a full-time mayor position, to which George was destined to be elected from 1975-1981.  During his term, he appointed me to serve as a Commissioner on the Anchorage Bicentennial Commission with Arliss Sturgulewski and other friends.  My particular job was to organize for the Mayor under Arliss’ careful supervision, the actual 4th of July Park Strip celebration in 1976, which some later referred to as, "the biggest gathering since the Statehood celebration in 1959".  We’ve had much bigger gatherings since then, but for the time it was a big deal and Alaska’s population was about half of what it has become.  

During those years I had the pleasure of writing a few proclamations the Mayor believed merited his signature, volunteered for a few political campaigns in which he had an interest and assisted in coordinating his wonderful retirement banquet at the Sheraton Hotel (Photo, Mayor George Sullivan, middle, with master of ceremonies, Bill Tobin {r-scroll down to 4-7-09 story} and myself).  I adored Margaret and wrote words to ‘Oh, Danny Boy’ as if they took the form of a loving message from her to George, and Kelly Garrison, a gorgeous operatic redhead sung the ‘Irish-Alaskan’ tribute like a plaintive nightengale accompanied by the haunting harmony of a night loon on a nearby lake.

Thank you Father for giving the gift of life to George, Margaret and the Sullivan family, for they then became devoted to you.  Their lives became gifts to Alaska and countless friends and even unaware citizens as their parents had before them.  Enable those of us who desire and ask it of you, to do our best to leave good legacies for those family, friends and unknown citizens who will follow us, as George, Margaret and their noble clan have done.  Amen.