Waking Larry Sullivan by Ed Grant Jr.

This is a piece written by Ed Grant, Jr. son of Ed Grant, Sports Writer, who my father loved deeply (both Father and Son). He wote this in 2005 and let it be noted that my dad now has 13 grandchildren instead of 10. :) I am profoundly grateful for this story.

Waking Larry Sullivan

            On September 11, 2001, a retired Air Force colonel visiting a friend in California was woken by news of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.  His son-in-law, John Farrell, worked for Sandler O’Neill in the South Tower of the World Trade Center.  Per daily routine, John had boarded a New Jersey Transit train at dawn in Basking Ridge, NJ.  The Colonel knew he would have been at his desk as the planes hit. 

            Thus began a trans-continental journey of folkloric dimension.  The Colonel drove a rented car over night to Denver International Airport, arriving early on the morning of September 12.  Joining him there from Boulder, Colorado, were his daughter, Megan, her husband, Edward McDowell, and their daughter, one of the colonel’s 10 grandchildren shared with Maureen, his wife of 44 years. 

            Friends will agree that if anyone could have procured a plane -- any plane -- back to New Jersey on that day, it would have been The Colonel.  But that was beyond even his legendary serendipitous powers.  The one and only alternative was to drive.  Now knowing that John Farrell, father of four, was indeed one of the thousands who did not return home the previous day, The Colonel did what his military training, Celtic temperament, and Catholic (both small and large “C”) sensibilities led him inexorably to do. 

            He forged a plan.  He and Ed would alternately drive, straight through to the Garden State.  But there would be no wallowing in the unspeakable.  Hence, no radios, no restaurants with TVs, not even newspapers at rest stops.  But there would be sustenance, joy, even laughter, throughout the journey.  For 40 hours, minus a couple of catnaps, he played troubadour to this band of grieving souls, regaling with a welter of stories that friends knew in snatches, and that this segment of his family now saw as one unbroken tapestry.  His source was simply his life.  But it was not about him.  Rather, it was about the souls he had met, known, befriended, and loved throughout a remarkable tenure on this earth.  Drawing from the past, his soul was nevertheless focused entirely on the present moment.      

            Col. Laurence Francis Sullivan, USAF (Ret.), crossed to eternal life on June 16, 2005.  Hours earlier, he had given the principal eulogy for his dear friend Edward Mather, the legendary track coach of Bernards (NJ) High School in its glory years of the 1970s and 1980s.  He had largely won a bout with cancer first diagnosed in 2003, but now, his athlete’s body simply gave out, in the form of a pulmonary embolism.  His brief nocturnal struggle awoke his beloved Maureen, who had time to see him smile, and then peacefully close his eyes. 

            If I have ever known of death from a broken heart, Larry’s might be it. 

            Larry Sullivan was simply one of the most remarkable persons I have ever heard of, much less met and counted as a friend.  His death affected so many people so deeply precisely because his life was a constant reminder of the inherent dignity of each human being, a dignity linked to the unique individuality of each person.  His life was a 24/7 rant against the sameness and conformity of “modern” life, against the seemingly-prevailing power of “men with no chests” (C.S. Lewis, “The Abolition of Man”), and against the notion (debunked so well by papal biographer George Weigel) that life is “just one damn thing after another.”  For Larry, life was one ironic, serendipitous, joyous, tragic, contentious, harmonious, Spirit-filled thing after another – quite often simultaneously, as his journey of 9/12/2001 demonstrated.  Come along for a mere glimpse, and see if you do not agree. 

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            To understand Larry Sullivan, and those who knew him best, requires some understanding of what it means to be a “fan” of track and field.  For complex reasons, this once-solid American spectator sport has become opaque to the masses of sports fans, at least those outside Eugene, Oregon, and, on Penn Relays weekend, Philadelphia.  To be a fan of the sport is not to be confused with mere participation in the galaxy of road races and charity 5Ks and 10Ks held each weekend throughout the country.  Rather, it is to appreciate inherently an excellence in effort, strength, endurance, speed that is not duplicable in any other sport – the fastest NFL tailback would be crushed in the U.S. Junior National Championship 100 meters – and that admits of no compromise.  (Why track no longer fills indoor arenas as it did a generation or two ago is a subject Larry Sullivan could expound upon, but beyond the scope of these reflections.) 

            According to renowned track writer and TV producer Walter Murphy, Larry Sullivan became in the last 30 years of his life most well-connected but least-known persona in the sport.  You can Google his name and discover not a link to the man himself.  Yet, he was directly responsible for the development of the top collegiate cross-country coach in the nation, as well as the 32-year-old coach who may eventually reach that same honor. 

            How did this occur?  In the words of Ed Grant, legendary chronicler of the sport in the state of New Jersey (and, yes, this author’s father), it starts with Larry’s running career itself.  You could listen to Larry throughout an entire meet at Madison Square Garden, an NCAA cross-country championship, or even a 10-hour Saturday at the Penn Relays and not hear a word about his own achievements. 

            But they must have been singular, as Grant reminded his many readers in a personal internet eulogy.   From St. Ann’s High School in Queens – now known as Archbishop Molloy and, under that name, itself known for legendary programs under eventual Georgetown coach Frank Rienzo – he was awarded a scholarship to Arizona State College.  That led to one of the earliest Sullivan legends – drawing upon skills honed during penurious adolescent journeys from Queens to Washington, DC and Newport, Rhode Island, Larry literally hitchhiked the 2500 miles to Tempe, stopping at homes along the way.   

            So modest was he about his days at Arizona State (he often said “I did not go to college; I went to Arizona State”)  that, after his death, his son John told that he had never seen a picture of his father in a Sun Devils singlet – until that is, his wake, where a cache of previously-unknown negatives, over 50 years old, had been developed into fine prints.  John, himself a star both at Bernards HS under Ed Mather, and at Georgetown under Joe Lang, was clearly touched – and amazed – that his father had never shared these pictures with his family.            

            (I got a taste of this modesty myself.  For years he would call and address me as “Counselor” – never revealing that somehow, in between an active pilot’s career, raising four kids, and mentoring countless athletes, he also had earned a law degree.) 

            As for the years after Arizona State, let me put it this way: long before it became common parlance, Larry was the first person I know who answered the “what do you do” question by saying, “if I told you, I would have to kill you.”  Suffice to say that the Air Force, and others in the Government, recognized that behind Larry’s open eyes and smile lay an internal fortitude, a “sense of where he is,” and an ability to focus on the present moment required for the type of covert assignments one does not talk about afterwards.  At Larry’s wake, everyone knew why his remains rested under an American flag, but no one talked about it. 

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            Larry Sullivan’s impact on track and field could be summarized as a perfect amalgam of subsidiarity (“Small is Beautiful,” in Schumacher’s title) and boundless audacity.  After service in Vietnam, Larry left active duty for the Reserves, and migrated first to West Windsor, New Jersey.  Shortly afterwards, though, he moved his family of four children to Bernardsville, one of hundreds of small communities on the patchwork map of the Garden State, and a commuter stop on the leafy Gladstone Branch of Erie-Lackawanna Railroad.  In the 1960s, an iconoclastic, wiry-haired mathematics teacher named Edward Mather began turning out cross-country and distance running teams of unusual cohesion, talent, and, soon enough, consistent achievement. 

            As a runner of medium talent on a competing small school team, I immediately noticed some things about the Bernards teams.  First was the outsized personality of the coach, who always wanted to schedule our team in a dual meet (our school was then chasing the state record for consecutive victories).  Second, and more important, was how the teams ran.  For a small school, Bernards had a lot of runners – and a lot of good ones.  And, like the great Catholic school cross-country powers of that day, they ran in packs, ferocious packs if you were trying to defeat them, seemingly feeding off each other in a way our own team never quite managed.  I was convinced we worked hard, even as hard as they did, but we did not quite grab the brass ring at the end of the season.  Bernards, it seems, always did. 

            Larry Sullivan became an instant presence in this scene.  He had three daughters, and it would be years before girls cross-country and track were well-established; his son John did not enter the Bernards program until 1975.  No matter to Larry.  Behind the scenes, he became an influence every bit as important as the coach, a fixture at “the Wall,” a gathering place on the Bernards campus.  Moreso, he became a mainstay of the legendary Sunday morning long runs that were a staple of the Bernards training program.  And therein lies a tale of Larry Sullivan’s audacity. 

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            Those of you who run marathons, or love someone who does, know well the routine of the “Saturday (or Sunday) long run,” that weekly slog of 12, 15, 18, or 20 miles, essential for increasing red blood cells and strengthening the mitochondria within those cells, thus training the body to burn fat efficiently over the course of a long-distance race.  The godfather of the weekend long run was Arthur Lydiard, a New Zealander who, along with rival coach Percy Cerruty of Australian, brought antipodean runners to the top of the distance running world in the 1960s and 1970s.  “Training the

Lydiard Way

” became a cult classic among coaches, but not ubiquitous.  Larry, of course, possessed a copy, and passed it along to C. Mark Wetmore, a graduate of Bernards HS and assistant coach under Mather. 

            Not content with passing along the written wisdom of Lydiard, Larry Sullivan went in search of the man.  This was not an easy thing to do.  In Salingeresque fashion, the Kiwi coach, famous for one great book, refrained from public view.  By this time, the early 1970s, Larry was employed by Flying Tigers, doing cargo runs all over the world, and picking up lifelong friends along the journey.  By whatever means, Larry heard that Lydiard was living in a particular area in Germany, but did not have a precise address.  In a scene anticipating “Field of Dreams” by about 15 years, he hopped an FT flight, and on landing inquired of the locals “Wo lebst Herr Lydiard?” After getting the address, he knocked, introduced himself – and a lifelong friendship was born.  Shortly thereafter, Lydiard was a guest in Sullivan home, and was lecturing at Bernards high to the running cognoscenti. 

            Among those cognoscenti was an iconoclastic young coach (and proprietor of the “Mine Mountain Running Department,” a youth running club) named Charles Mark Wetmore.  Wetmore had run at Bernards High School under Edward Mather in the late 1960s and early 1970s, graduated from Rutgers, and then gravitated back home, serving as an assistant coach there and at another school in the region.  One can imagine Lydiard and Wetmore on one of the legendary Bernards 20-milers – often run through the trails of Jockey Hollow, where the Continental Army endured in 1779-1780 the most severe winter of the Revolutionary War. 

            Wetmore’s unique temperament and coaching skills, nurtured under the tutelage of Ed Mather, Larry Sullivan, and the great Lydiard, eventually found their natural home at the University of Colorado.  Since becoming head coach of the Buffaloes in 1995, his men’s teams have won all ten of the Big 12 cross-country championships – and his women have won nine.  The men and women have each posted an NCAA national championship, and 17 Wetmore-coached athletes have represented the United States at the World Cross-Country Championships. 

This year, 13 “running Buffaloes” made the Big 12 All-Academic Team, in majors ranging from Mechanical Engineering to Finance. 

            As documented in Chris Lear’s small masterpiece, “Running With the Buffaloes” (an imbedded writer’s account of the 1998 Wetmore teams), fashioning such success is not simply a matter of pounding out 100-mile weeks at high altitude.  Beyond physical effort, the discipline extends to the bonds of teamwork and friendship, right to the soul of the runner.  (One thinks of Vince Lombardi, and the now-discredited myth that he was merely a relentless taskmaster.)  Ed Mather, for all his idiosyncracies, knew this – I could sense this as a teenager.  Arthur Lydiard, whom I never met, did not attract a cult following for being a martinet.  And Larry Sullivan – well, he was simply one we rightly call a Great Soul.   The young charges of Coach Wetmore may or may not know this entire story, but they imbibe it, thrive on it, and in their time, will pass it on to the runners they coach and the children they raise.

            (Side note:  Chris Lear, chronicler of the Buffaloes, grew up in Bernards, but attended and ran at The Pingry Schoolin in Martinsville, NJ.  There, he was coached by Meg Waldron, who was herself coached by Wetmore at Bernards in the early 1980s in a career that still ranks as among the best in the history of the Garden State.  Years later, Waldron, one of 9 children, gave up a successful sports and fitness business to serve as a missionary in Honduras, and would go on to teach and coach at The Philadelphia School, in Center City. Her middle-school charges won a gold medal at the 2011 Penn Relays).

            So the story is not yet done.  The Buffalo men did win their 10-for-10 Big 12 championship in October 2005.  But it was not easy.  A mere 8 points back was Texas – had three Longhorns each run about 1 second per mile faster, the title would have gone from Boulder to Austin.  Surely, you might be thinking, there cannot be another Larry Sullivan - Bernards link to the Lone Star State.

            But think again: Also present to mourn The Colonel in June 2005 was the Longhorn’s young cross-country coach, Jason Vigilante.  “Vig” hails from Morristown, NJ, a few miles up Route 202 from Bernards; due to personal circumstances and tiny Bernards’ status as a running mecca, he also came under the influence and tutelage of Ed Mather, Mark Wetmore, and – Larry Sullivan.  As Chris Lear told, “[Mid-June] was a tough week for Vig.  Mather was like a father to him, to-wit, his son’s middle name is Mather, and he was really close to Larry  as well.  Together those guys started something really cool.”

            Yes.  Very cool.  Really.  Or as The Colonel might have said: The Pupil (Vig) should not so soon challenge The Master (Wetmore).  

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             I drove the four hours to Bernardsville on a perfect June afternoon.  I knew it would be tough, much more for my father than for me, and beyond measure for this family which had already suffered too much untimely death.  I looked forward to seeing members of my own Georgetown track family, for “Sully,” the colonel’s son, is an esteemed leader of that fraternity.  Beyond that, I did not know what to expect.

            All I can say in retrospect is: may your own wake be as much a bit of heaven.  A crucifix. Surrounding the flag-draped coffin, scattered books, those The Colonel loved, from Hemingway to Dostoveksy to Lydiard.  Hand-lettered cards from grandchildren.  Prominently affixed to the bier: a vintage Penn Relays pennant.  In the side room (needed for every minute of this very packed affair) tables of photos.  And, courtesy of producer and statistician Walt Murphy, two televisions playing endless loops of ESPN’s coverage of the 2005 rendition (the 111^th running) of The Colonel’s favorite track and field meet.  (A few years earlier, he had brought two German friends and seasoned athletics fans to Franklin Field for the final weekend of April.  They proclaimed that they had never seen anything like it.)  It was the living epigraph of a Catholic and catholic life.

            I repeated that drive to New Jersey six months after the Colonel’s wake, for the state high school cross-country championships.  Bernards was on the line, as well as the girls’ team from my own high school, and a young relation destined for future greatness at Georgetown University.  It was a fine day – though perhaps not for the young harriers as they climbed out of “The Bowl” at Holmdel State Park.  It was also be the first of these meets in many years where The Colonel was not be around to tease my father, kibbutz with the college coaches seeking their recruits, and handicap the 12 races with his typical flair.       “Best of all, he loved the Fall,” Hemingway wrote, not thinking, perhaps, of the beauty of a pack of 200 runners headed across a grassy plain, gasping to fill their lungs with the dying air of summer. 

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            The Penn Relays, like any annual gathering joining those who do something out of love, always have their share of poignancy, in memory of “absent friends.”  Few absences were more felt at the 2006 running (the 112^th) than that of The Colonel. 

            The Relays’ signature event, the college men’s distance medley “Championship of America,” went off late Friday afternoon with a balanced and talented field: Arkansas, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Michigan, Providence, Stanford, and – Jason Vigilante’s Texas Longhorns.  With 600 meters left in this 4-man, 10-lap event (1200M, 400M, 800M, and 1600M), all of these schools were in contention.  Then, on the last lap, Arkansas’ Josphat Boit and the Longhorn’s Leo Manzano broke away, Manzano (the 2005 NCAA 1,500 meter champion) holding a slight lead. 

            Somewhere, Larry Sullivan was watching.  Arkansas, since hiring coach John McDonnell (who served a brief stint at my own high school) in 1973, has won over 40 NCAA national team championships in track and cross-country, as well as scores of Championship of America plaques at the Penn Relays.  Texas, a track and field power known more for its sprinters and jumpers, had never won the distance medley at Penn. 

            Manzano held on to win by 3 meters.  The crowd of 40,000-plus cheered the thrilling finish.  But to those who knew “Vig,” and how much he lost in that span of 5 days 10 months earlier, the thrill went far deeper, seared into memory as one of the most poignant moments they will ever witness in sports.  (“Vig” would go on to become the current head coach at the University of Virginia.) 

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                        Did you know when Arthur Lydiard passed away?  December 11, 2004, actually, six months to the day before Ed Mather.  He died in Texas, on a lecture tour, at age 87.  He died alone, in a hotel.  Days earlier, he had been an overnight guest in a lively Austin home.  The home, then, of Jason, Amy, and 2-year-old Jack Mather Vigilante. 

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                                                                                                            Edward R. Grant is an attorney in Washington DC and remains an active runner and coach.  He is indebted to everyone named in this article.