Ex-EMMC chaplain, Sullivan, dies

The Rev. Robert Sullivan, 92, a priest who counted his 23 years as chaplain at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor and his 26 years as a teacher in Iraq among his most important accomplishments, died Jan. 9 at a Jesuit retreat center in Weston, Mass.

Sullivan counseled sick and dying patients at EMMC and other Bangor health care facilities until he was 87, when he relocated to Massachusetts. He was part-time chaplain at a Baptist hospital there for a number of years, only slowing down six months ago.

“He was a wonderful chaplain,” the Rev. Rex Garrett, EMMC director of chaplain services, said Thursday. “He saw 50 patients a day.”

Sullivan received Eastern Maine Healthcare’s Distinguished Service Award in 1996.

Garrett described Sullivan as a tireless and caring chaplain who celebrated morning Mass and then worked all day long for the patients, often being called at all hours to administer last rites.

“He was a great man and well respected everywhere he’s been,” Garrett said.

Other area caregivers also noted his dedication to the people he served.

“He was very warm, very loving, and a very gentle person,” Judy Moores, director of activities and volunteer services at Ross Manor, said Wednesday. “We could call him anytime, night or day. It didn’t matter the hour – he would come.”

There were many facets to the priest, who seemed to pack the adventures of several lifetimes into one.

A native of Connecticut, Sullivan joined a Jesuit seminary in 1928, where he studied philosophy and read the classics in their original Greek and Latin.

His pursuit of knowledge led him to become an anthropologist. At 23, Sullivan traveled to Alaska where he lived among the Athabascan people.

“It was an adventure for me,” Sullivan said in a 1997 Bangor Daily News interview. “But it was important work, too … I was one of the few white people these villagers had ever known.”

He hunted, fished and trapped alongside the Ten’a Indians while documenting their customs and beliefs.

After returning home, he requested to be sent back to Alaska as a missionary and anthropologist in 1943. Instead, he was sent to Iraq, where he taught religion, math and English to Christian students in Baghdad. Sullivan also avidly coached the school’s basketball team, Garrett said.

During his long tenure as principal of a Jesuit high school there, the religious order started a popular university. The schools flourished despite the emergence of anti-Western sentiment, even attracting the children of officers in the Iraqi army.

“As time went on, though, it became increasingly evident that the U.S. was not well liked in Iraq,” Sullivan recalled in the same interview. “That feeling was not widespread among the people, necessarily, but rather a political thing.”

He and other Jesuits were expelled from the country in 1969.

The Rev. James Brewer of Lyman, formerly of St. John’s Catholic Church in Bangor, said that Sullivan never forgot his time in Iraq.

“One could say that his heart never left Baghdad because whenever you got him talking about his experiences teaching there, he would light up like a Christmas tree,” Brewer wrote Wednesday in a letter.

After Iraq, Sullivan worked training teachers in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt before coming to Bangor.

The priest appreciated the simple things in life, according to Brewer. “As long as there were brownies in the rectory, Father was happy,” Brewer wrote.

Other priests looked at Sullivan as an inspiration.

The Rev. Paul LaBree, formerly of Old Town, said that knowing Sullivan helped him decide to join the priesthood.

“He was certainly an inspiration to anyone who was considering a call to the priesthood,” LaBree said. “He always quietly did his duty without complaining. He was always faithful to his work.”

LaBree added that though Sullivan was not a “huge, popular priest,” his devotion to his work was obvious and powerful.

“I thought it was just refreshing to see someone work as he did with a joy and a love for Christ,” LaBree said.