December 26, 2009
To Serve with Honor
Prayer can be a state of relaxation. My Dad used to swear by prayer as being essential for human life. Dad was an Agnostic who said he never once experienced something that proved to him of God’s existence.
“To whom do you pray then, Dad?”
“It doesn’t matter. It is the act of praying that is the important part.”
Most likely Dad would have had a few more things to say on that topic. Then he’d have closed with his usual question,
“Do you understand?”
I probably asked him to tell it to me one more time, to make sure I got the lesson. And I’d probably have proposed that there had to be something being prayed to or else it wouldn’t work. He’d have allowed that it might or might not be important depending on the person involved.
Dad was a mathematical genius. He attended one year at Montana State University in Bozeman studying Electrical Engineering. He worked that summer for the Rural Electrification Association (REA) running a survey crew or doing Electrical Engineering work of some sort. Then he attended one year at Caltech. Out of money he returned to Montana until he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
He went one year at Caltech before the War. Then he came back from his duty station in the Weather Corps in Cairo, Egypt where he assisted the OSS in gathering intelligence from the coffee shops near Al-Azhar University.
Upon the recommendation of his OSS friend Joe, Dad read a newly translated version of the Koran. Joe, who new all of the Arabic dialects commonly spoken, said this particular translation best captured the essence of the Koran’s cultural teachings in its translation into English. Dad studied that Koran and swore that it was the most beautifully written book he ever read.
Having completed a year at Caltech, done his duty for his country by enlisting in the Army Air Corp (he later washed out and became an MP Sergeant (Military Police) for a time because he lacked the vision skills necessary to be a pilot, he returned to USA and went back to school on the GI bill. He received a Bachelor’s degree, from Stanford University, then returned to Montana to attend his father’s funeral, where he met Mom.
My Grandfather on my father’s side died about a year before I was born. Dad was attending his father’s funeral when he met my Mom who was there with her sister who was married to Dad’s younger brother Webb.
Dad’s name was Oliver and his younger brother was Webb (Wilber) and his youngest brother was Bob (Robert). They all joined up with the Army Air Corps, before it became the Air Force.
Webb went on to pilot many bombing missions in the Pacific. I never heard if Robert distinguished himself in the Second World War and he might even have been too young. I do remember hearing of him flying off a carrier deck in what may have been the Korean War. I’d have been six years old at the time and attending First Grade in Helena, Montana at the school that was a nine block walk towards town from the Clack Shack veteran’s housing where we lived at the time.
Aunt Pyhlis was married to Uncle Webb. They built a house in the Five Acre tracts of Livingston, Montana. I remember when the Interstate was being constructed just south of where Phyl and Webb had their place.
I think Dad said he met the Lumley girls (Alice, Ruth, Irene, Helen (my Mom), and Phylis) through their younger brother John. John was the baby of the family. Dad and John had become friends and over coffee one day John invited Dad to come with him to hear his older brother Art play the piano behind the vocals of Peggy Lane.
I think Dad said that Arthur or Art Lumley had top billing. But no matter. That was how Dad became acquainted with the Lumley girls and their older brother Art. The oldest boy Harold had died at six or seven years of age from complications after surgery.
And so it came to pass that Oliver Sullivan met Helen Lumley at his father’s funeral. He married her in June of 1949 and nine months later, by March of the following year, his only son was born, followed the next year by his first daughter, and two years later by his second daughter. Having accepted his wife’s daughter by a former marriage as his own, Oliver raised his three daughters and one son, beginning in Billings, Montana and moving to Helena, Montana upon his appointment as Commissioner of Labor for the State of Montana.
Oliver served as Commissioner of Labor for the State of Montana under Governor J. Hugo Aronson, who served from 1953 to 1961. Applying his social skills and his mathematical genius, Oliver had done political polling for Candidate Aronson’s run for political office. Oliver was appointed Commissioner of Labor in recognition of his ability to poll political opinion. His mathematical genius got him the appointment to work with the unions to keep the State out of harm.
“Go forth and serve with honor” were the only instructions Oliver received from Governor Aronson upon his appointment. Instructions from the Governor are not a trifling matter. To be given only one such instruction is an honor unto itself.
During Oliver’s term he became acquainted with the union bosses and he drank coffee with communists during the 1950’s, back when Senator Joseph McCarthy held hearings about the communists of USA who he said were conspiring to overthrow the government of the United States. Oliver is lucky he kept out of trouble in those days of communism “seeking a foothold” in USA.
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