The O'Sullivans of Skibereen and Sullivans of Cleveland, Ohio

by

J.C. Sullivan



Counties Kerry and Cork have certainly contributed many, many successful and storied sons and daughters to the world. One such story is that of the O’Sullivans of Skibereen and Cleveland, Ohio. A stonecutter by trade, he emigrated from Cobh to Ellis Island. From there he traveled to Ohio where he worked the stone quarries and built a home in Grafton, Ohio. He always referred to America as “This magnificent country.” His spouse was Catherine Harty from Clonmel, County Tipperary. It is believed she emigrated through Canada.

Like so many of the famine era, Frank J, Sullivan left from Cobh to Ellis Island and from there made his way to Cleveland, Ohio. He was later described as a “handsome version” of the American union leader John L. Lewis. Whoever saw the comparison was probably not aware that John L. Lewis had Vera O’Sullivan roots himself.

Frank J. married Margaret Jamieson, and eventually eight young Sullivans were added to the clan; Frank C., Delphine, William, Edwin, Thomas L., Katherine, Charles and John, who was called “Jack.” All the sons except Charles would work in the paint business at one time or another. But it was Frank Charles who landed a job at Arco Paint in the early 1900s.

Initially working as an electric company linesman and business agent for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), he was elected union treasurer and moved the family to their headquarters in Springfield, Illinois. However, he found the politics of it distasteful and sent his growing family back to Cleveland where a relative gave them a place to stay until Frank J. could return. The family eventually settled on Cleveland’s near West Side, in the predominantly Irish parish of St. Colman.

Frank landed a job at the Municipal Light Company and taught electrical theory at night at a technical school. His brother-in-law was Divisional Sales Manager at Arco Paint and brought him aboard, part-time, as a mail sorter. Frank J.’s son, Frank C., joined him at the firm. After three years Frank J. left the firm to be come the Eastern Sales Manager for Acorn Chemical Co. Frank C. joined his father two years later, in 1918.

Frank C. was blessed with the best of the Ui Suileabhain genes, personable, intelligent, handsome and one who readily made friends. His early leadership was evident at West High School where he was president of the honor society and his senior class and captain of the basketball team. During his summers he attended classes at the Culver Summer Naval School, an extension of the Culver Military Academy in Indiana. It was there he met his future bride, Margaret (Peg) Wilhemy.

Even though he entered Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Frank C. never severed his ties with Acorn. In his spare time he sold Acorn products to farmers in southwestern Ohio. Here he learned a hard lesson that he took with him throughout his career. Knowing the farmer was buying products from a competitor, Frank told him Acorn’s product was just as good. The astute farmer said the product he was currently using was “no damn good.” The farmer bought two drums off Frank but told him to never compare his product with his competitors’.

The union of Frank C. and Peg Wilhemy produced Frank C., Jr., nicknamed Sully, Margaret Patricia, Joan, Catherine, Suzanne and Tom. “We had a very happy upbringing,” Sue said. “My dad traveled a fair amount, but when he was home, there was a lot of togetherness. Sunday afternoon was everybody lying on the floor reading the paper.”

Frank was exempted from service in World War II due to his age and family status but four of the Sullivan boys served overseas. Following the war Frank played a key role in Acorn’s success. During the years of the Depression he negotiated a deal that would mean giving up a salary in exchange for 30% of the profit he would be able to generate. His philosophy was simple – hire the best salesmen in the industry and let them do their jobs.

His attempt to purchase the company failed so, with the owners’ blessing, he struck out and joined Basic Metals to sell aluminum pigment to Acorn and all aluminum coatings companies. He brokered a contract with Basic Metals to market and distribute the aluminum pigment and inside of a year, in 1947, he bought the company out. Republic Powdered Metals was formed, known today as RPM, Inc.

Frank’s son, Thomas C. Sullivan, a U.S. Navy veteran, has lead the company to become a $2 billion enterprise, becoming a world leader in specialty coatings. Although RPM doesn’t ring any bells with readers, they will recognize the names of Day-Glo and Rust-Oleum among others. As Chairman of the National Paint & Coatings Association, which represents some 400 manufacturers, suppliers and distributors, he negotiated a milestone agreement establishing lead exposure warnings and education programs. He was named CEO of the Decade by Financial World magazine was honored by the Cleveland Irish community at their 2007 Walks of Life Award.

This writer was pleased to have met Tom Sullivan at the 2007 Walks of Life awards in Cleveland as I was able to finally to meet a member of the family that I knew about for so very long. I told Tom a story my late father told me. An undercover Cleveland police officer (detective), Dad had entered an office on Franklin Avenue, on Cleveland’s west side (Acorn Chemical/Refining). As he walked into the office the secretary looked up and said, “Good morning, Mr. Sullivan.” My father was stunned. His immediate thought was “How the heck would she know who I am?” Dad heard a door open behind him. The secretary looked over dad’s shoulder and a look of astonishment came over her face. Dad turned around and said it was like looking into a mirror. Details of their conversation are long lost but I’m certain that Frank J. and John J. attempted to cross reference both our families’ Cork roots. And both families have not forgotten those roots, giving back to the community from which we spring.

Tom Sullivan’s wife, Sandy, has been very involved in many community endeavors.
“My mother was very involved in different organizations for the betterment of other folks,” said Sandy Sullivan. “I was always trying to get my hand in a little bit of this, and Tom was always saying, “Hey, you have a huge responsibility with our family, and let’s wait until our kids are grown. Then I promise you that I’ll get involved along with you.’”

Founded by the Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland in 1968, the Sullivan family supports The Urban Community School, a safe haven where children of all ethnicities and religious persuasions go to learn. Its current endowment is $9 million. The family is also involved with the old Saint Patrick’s Church on Cleveland’s near West Side, St. Malachi Church and Malachi House, the latter founded by Tom’s sister Kaki. The Malachi House provides a home for the terminally ill who are indigent.

In October, 2007, yet another generation of Skibereen O’Sullivans assumed leadership of the firm when Tom announced his retirement. Like his father and grandfather, Frank C. Sullivan attended Culver Military Academy but pursued his university education at the University of North Carolina as a Morehead Scholar. Now President and Chief Executive Officer, RPM International Inc., Frank received his B.A. degree in 1983. From 1983 to 1986, he held various commercial lending and corporate finance positions at Harris Bank and First Union National Bank prior to joining RPM as a Technical Service Representative from 1987 to 1988 and as Regional Sales Manager from 1988 to 1989 at RPM's AGR Company joint venture. In 1989, he became the Company's Director of Corporate Development.

He became a Vice President of the Company in 1991, Chief Financial Officer in 1993, Executive Vice President in 1995, President in 1999, and Chief Operating Officer in 2001 and was elected Chief Executive Officer in October 2002. He serves on the boards of The Timken Company, The Cleveland Foundation, the Greater Cleveland Chapter of the American Red Cross, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation's Digestive Disease Center Leadership Board, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Greater Cleveland Partnership and Ohio Business Roundtable.

Cleveland, northeast Ohio and elsewhere have been enriched by an enormously successful family who has managed, despite the trappings of wealth, to keep their feet on the ground. Way to go Sullivans! And, once again, thank you Ireland.

FATHER'S DAY

by
J C Sullivan, Ohio, USA

Each year the month of June usually tells me warm weather is here for real. And it's the month that celebrates a day that continues to make me confront conflicting feelings - Father's Day. Although I knew more than one man as my father, each occupied the same physical body. Memories are bittersweet and span many years.

True to his Scorpio nature, Da was an enigma to his family and perhaps to himself as well. We never knew much about his youth; he shared few memories about growing up. Maybe his youth, like mine, contained many bittersweet or painful memories and feelings. A family member once told me that when his younger sister Kitty died during the flu epidemic of 1918, during World War One, his mother told him it should've been him who died instead of her.

We know that after graduating from Cathedral Latin High School in 1929 he disappeared from Cleveland, never telling anyone in the family what he was planning. They eventually heard from him; he'd hitchhiked,or rode rails, West with a friend. While there he attended the University of New Mexico and apparently fell ill with a mysterious malady. We don't know if it was of a physical or spiritual nature, perhaps it was both. He returned home to Ohio when he recovered.

We've a photograph of him in his Army uniform, wearing a Sam Browne Belt and packing a forty-five caliber pistol. It was taken during the Depression years when work for most American men just wasn't available. While on temporary duty at Fort Knox, Kentucky, at a U.S.O. dance, he met a bright, spirited and beautiful Irish-American lass from Louisville. Later, against the wishes of her family, because she was so young, they married in Louisville's St. Patrick's Church, in the Irish district called Portland, and he brought her home to Cleveland. His bride, from a city at least as old as Cleveland, was insulted when my grandmother attempted to explain to her what traffic signals were.

The first father I remember was a quiet, fearless hero. He had an athletic build and was darkly handsome. During, or immediately after World War Two, a fire broke out on our street, Shelley Court, in the Berea projects where we lived. With a blanket over him for protection, he crawled in and rescued two sisters. Unfortunately, their mother, whose husband was away in the Navy, died in the fire. I still have the framed oil the sisters painted and later presented to him in gratitude for his selfless act. My mother told me she'd been upset the following day when the newspaper story mispelled Da's name.

This first father, the one who enjoyed taking his sons with him, occupies my first conscious memories. Shortly after the end of World War Two he took my brother and me through the 'bomber plant', which is now Brookpark's I-X Center. We felt privileged among our peers, as if a heretofore secret world had been revealed to us. We'd seen part of the adult world; bodies of aircraft in various stages of construction; we saw what some people did 'at work.'

This first father enjoyed taking his sons on the bus to Hopkins International Airport. Together we watched aircraft take off and land. Da would identify the planes as they taxied. "That's a C-47, the military version of the DC-3," he would say, pointing out an olive-drab colored warbird. We people-watched bodies scurrying to and from important places, where we imagined they did important things. He topped-off our day of simple pleasures with lunch with at the airport restaurant. That made US feel important, as if we were part of a bigger world, and had only paused in Cleveland to refuel our bodies.

This was the father that made my brother and me Cleveland Browns football fans. The first 'real' fight we ever witnessed was in the 'Dawg Pound', the bleacher section at Cleveland Stadium. In those days, when the Browns were perennial champions, there was never a screen raised behind the goal posts to prevent the football from going into the stands. If you caught the football after it was kicked there, you kept it. After one such kick, two men were violently disagreeing on who was going to keep the football. My memories with this father are treasures, before our family grew to nine children, and life's stresses apparently molded him into another man.

This later father sought activities in which perhaps he sought personal therapy and relevance, or even flight from personal demons. He no longer included his sons in activities. I can't recall that he ever attended one of my baseball or basketball games. Nor did he share his feelings about things. Except when he was angry or upset about something, which seemed to be frequent. We never had a one-on-one dialogue, the kind of talk in which fathers reveal to their sons how men naturally communicate and express feelings to each other. Instead, he seemed to retreat to other activities and adult toys that occupied his time, talent and energy; like the black Royal manual typewriter perched atop his basement desk. I often think how he would love using my personal computer, word-processing software and Seikosha printer.

From his subterranean desk, his solitude next to the furnace, a few feet from the ever-present mound of soiled clothing from our family of nine children, he banged out letters on his old black, Underwood typewriter and wrote - the White House, Congress and friends around the world, especially missionary friends in Patna, India. During the '50s he was published in an international Catholic newspaper when he'd written that, in an attempt to convert him, Americans should send Russia's Joe Stalin a Christmas card. The editor, apparently sensing there would be reaction, added his postscripts about what the "guy named Sullivan" was had to say. The editor's instincts were right on the money because reaction, indeed, came in - from all over the world. Most suggested Da needed psychiatric counseling.

In what must have been a half-hearted venture, he apparently ran for political office once. I recall seeing a letter offering him condolences of sort on his unsuccessful run for Governor of Ohio. No one else in the family knew about this.

As I left my teen years, I departed home for the first time. Later came marriage and eventually children, three daughters. As Da and I both grew older our relationship improved somewhat. He was certainly more laid back after his retirement. My younger brother says Da even attended his own baseball games. However, as men, Da and I were still unable to communicate feelings to each other than those that were on the surface every day. As a result, we blocked ourselves from a fully human relationship.

After an absence of fifteen years he visited me recently in a dream. An overwhelming and indescribable feeling of love filled me when I saw him return. He was with two others; all were engaged in important work, just like his homicide and undercover Detective work in Cleveland had been. They couldn't stay, they didn't have a lot of time. As in life, we two Scorpios still didn't have the right words for each other. Sensing this, and reading my heart, my father took the lead and broke the long silence before leaving again. "But you KNEW I loved you," he said.

"Yes, Dad, I knew," I said, "but you never told me."

My children, now young adults, know I love them...I continue to tell them so.