111C Oliver R. Sullivan
January 20, 2008 by Lyno Sullivan
The words “honor thy father” are important to me. This blog entry is devoted to the memory and the honor of my father, who passed away one year ago last Friday. I shall toast his 93rd birthday which occurs this coming Sunday, January 25th. Please read my letter if you wish but be sure to view the pictures and read the newspaper clipping at the end, which begins my father’s story.
I hand wrote the following letter. I have edited in additional information concerning my recent work presenting his ideas on coal to oil, science, technology, mathematics, politics, economics, and so on and so forth.
My dearest father,
Well, you died one year ago, on January 16, 2008 at the age of 91, nine days before your 92nd birthday. Next Sunday I plan to celebrate your 93rd birthday. I cannot give you a traditional birthday present but I thought to create a blog entry, so that my friends can get to know you by way of this written story.
In the year since your last birthday I wrote a blog post explaining most of what you taught me concerning coal to oil science and its economics. I advertised that blog entry at digg.com and received compliments for the usefulness of what I had written. I called the article “Coal to Liquid Fuel, Plastics, and Concrete”
http://peaceengine.com/blog/2009/01/16/1127-coal-to-liquid-fuel-plastics-and-concrete/and I posted it at digg
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Coal_to_Liquid_Fuel_Plastics_and_ConcreteI wrote that story and now I want to tell the backstory because it is far more important than what I wrote. I remember you telling the coal to oil story beginning perhaps twenty years ago. Over the years until your stroke in May of 2007 you taught me everything I incorporated into that article. I got almost everything you had explained into that one article, except your work on using biological systems to harvest rare-earth metals from mine tailings.
To do that writing I must study your notebooks because you had your stroke partway through your Internet research. (Yep! Using wikipedia at the age of 91–my father was a marvel of clean living). Fortunately, you explained how you were working your way through the periodic table, studying your biochemistry books, and seeking the specific bacteria or algae with an affinity for each common and rare-earth metals. I can replicate your research pattern and quickly produce results suitable for a survey of the field biochemical and biological solution for all mining slurrys. I recently wondered about using variations of these systems to remove earth metals from the flyash byproduct of the coal to liquid fuel process.
I published the survey of field and now I am writing this letter to append to the work so that all readers might know that your work over the last twenty years has been my inspiration. I will soon begin the next phase of the publication of your stories, ideas, and your journals of discovery.
In these days of turmoil and fear, your visions, of the future of USA, will be a voice of calming. You were ever the optimist; people need more optimism.
It was difficult to watch a man of your stature grow old and transition through your mind loss caused by your massive stroke. I spoke to you by phone a few hours before you died and explained to you that that you were not able to return to your former mental abilities and that, as we had agreed, I was to see you through to a merciful end. I told you as your daughter held her phone to your ear, that you could go when you were ready and a few hours later you did as I had said.
“Dad,” I said, “you said that you did not want to live without your mind intact. I believe your mind is gone and is not coming back. You can die when you are ready. I love you. And I will love you until the day I die.”
In memory of a great man:
This blog entry contains photographs and clippings from the life of Oliver R. Sullivan. of Laurel, Montana.
Oliver with his brothers and a friend
Oliver with father and brothers
Oliver 1942 Williams Field as Aviation Cadet
Oliver with friend Eddie La Prath 1943
Oliver R. Sullivan
Switchman Files For Legislature
Seeks Nomination On G.O.P. Ticket
Oliver R. Sullivan, a switchman at Billings for the Northern Pacific railway, filed his petition Saturday with the clerk and recorder for one of the six Republican nominations for representative in the state legislature.
Sullivan, who lives at Laurel, said that this is the first time he has sought public office. He is a veteran of the Second World war with four years’ service in the army as a meteorologist and weather observer, a year of his service being in North Africa.
The candidate is a native Montanan. He was born at Whitehall, Jan. 25, 1916, a son of Mr. and Mrs. Ira Sullivan, and a few years later moved to Laurel with his parents. He graduated from Laurel high school in 1933, and is a formet student in engineering at Montana State college, and in mathematics and physics at California Institute of Technology. He also attended Stanford university last summer.
After two years at the state college, Sullivan entered the employment of the Montana Power company at Laurel and worked for the company in 1936 and 1937. He was an engineer for the Montana conservation board rural electrification branch in 1939 and 1940. When he entered the army in 1942 he had been with the Northern Pacific at Billings for two years. He is a member of the Billings lodge of the Brotherhood or Railway Trainmen.
Sullivan resides with his mother at Laurel. His father died of a heart attack two months ago.
Oliver runs for political office
To be continued . . .
