Marion Sullivan
Longtime Hampton Bays resident and former Southampton Press columnist and administrative assistant Marion D. Sullivan died at her home in East Quogue on Wednesday, October 26. She was 80.
As an administrative assistant at The Southampton Press from the late 1960s through the 1980s, Mrs. Sullivan played a big role in the paper’s newsroom.
“She served as the primary point of contact for a number of people,” said Doug Love, a former Southampton Press reporter and neighbor to Mrs. Sullivan. “She was kind of the heart of the newsroom.”
Mrs. Sullivan’s job allowed her to be the middleman for the newsroom and the public.
“If you wanted to know what was going on in Southampton, you talked to Marion for the latest news and gossip,” Mr. Love said.
Mrs. Sullivan also wrote the Friends & Neighbors column for the Hampton Bays area during this time.
“She loved telling everybody all the good news going on in the community,” her daughter Maura Sullivan said. “She wanted to print the good news: graduations, anniversaries, who had a baby and all the successes of people. She was a very positive person.”
Indeed Mrs. Sullivan was a light to others. Mr. Love remembers her joyful spirit from when he first joined The Press in 1979.
“She was always very bright and happy, very welcoming and was something of an institution in herself,” he said. “It was a rare day that she didn’t have a smile on her face.”
Over the years, Mrs. Sullivan served as the president of the Parents’ Association at Our Lady of the Hamptons School in Southampton, she was involved with the Hampton Bays Board of Education, was a member of the board of directors of The Dominican Sisters, worked on the Church of St. Rosalie’s Church Parish Council in Hampton Bays, belonged to the Irish American Society and, at one point ,was a Girl Scout leader.
Born in Quincy, New Jersey, on May 24, 1931, she graduated from Quincy High School and went on to work for a Massachusetts power company.
In 1953, Frank Sullivan’s cousin, Father Joseph O’Looney, thought he and the young Mrs. Sullivan would be perfect together, and so he arranged a meeting for them. The two were married a year later on October 23, 1954.
When Mr. Sullivan accepted a teaching position at Hampton Bays High School, the couple moved to the area and raised their two children there.
“She raised us to be very independent and civic-minded to serve our community,” Ms. Sullivan said. “Education was extremely important. There was never a question whether we were going to college, but where.”
After she left The Press in 1989, she worked at the Meadow Club of Southampton until she had a stroke in 2003. As office manager, Mrs. Sullivan continued interacting with the community and planned all the Christmas parties for the club.
Mrs. Sullivan was someone who loved and served the community, but she also loved to travel.
“In a moment’s notice, if someone said, ‘Marion would you like to go to England?’ she’d say, ‘I’d love to, when are we leaving?’” Ms. Sullivan said. Mrs. Sullivan enjoyed visiting Ireland and loved to go to Chicago each year to see her son and his family.
“She didn’t need an excuse to travel,” Ms. Sullivan said. “She just needed an invitation.”
Mrs. Sullivan is survived by her children, Maura Sullivan and her husband Donald Wilson, and Mark Sullivan and his wife Barbara; grandchildren, Erik, Erin and Colleen Lofstad, Jillian Sullivan and Ryan Wilson; siblings, Frank and Bernadine Reilly; and many nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her husband, Francis Sullivan.
Funeral arrangements were under the direction of the R.J. O’Shea Funeral Home in Hampton Bays.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations to the Dominican Sisters, www.dsfhs.org,, Charity in Action, (205) 281-2997 and the Frank and Marion Sullivan Memorial Fund, P.O. Box 1028, Hampton Bays, NY 11946, would be appreciated by the family.
on Nov 9, 2011