[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 185 (Wednesday, December 5, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14782-S14783]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



  (At the request of Mr. Reid, the following statement was ordered to 
be printed in the Record.)

                REMEMBERING BROTHER J. STEPHEN SULLIVAN

 Mrs. CLINTON. Mr. President, on January 9, 2007, Brother J. 
Stephen Sullivan, Manhattan College's 17th president from 1975 to 1987, 
passed away at the age of 86 in Lincroft, NJ. A noted teacher, scholar, 
theologian, and administrator, Brother Sullivan served Manhattan 
College tirelessly for more than a quarter century. A champion for 
Catholic higher education, he was dedicated to establishing new 
programs, which enhanced the landscape of the college. He is credited 
with fully implementing the transformation of Manhattan College into a 
coeducational institution and ensuring the integration of women into 
the entire curriculum. The college had become coed just prior to 
Brother Sullivan's move into the president's office. Brother Sullivan 
touched and enriched the lives of so many, and I am pleased to ask to 
have the below moving tribute to the life and accomplishments of 
Brother Sullivan, written by Brother Luke Salm, F.S.C., a longtime 
professor and trustee of Manhattan College, printed in the 
Congressional Record.
  The material follows.

  The Late Brother J. Stephen Sullivan, F.S.C., President, Manhattan 
                        College, Bronx, New York

       ``What is so rare as a day in June?'' says the poet. June 
     25, 1920 was a rare day, indeed, that saw the birth of 
     Jeremiah Thomas Sullivan to the delight of his parents, 
     Bridget Quirk and John Joseph Sullivan. The child grew in 
     wisdom, age and grace in a typical Irish Catholic family in 
     the Boston suburbs, a family that would give to the Church 
     not only this Christian Brother but also a Jesuit priest and 
     a Sister of Charity. In due time, young Jeremiah attended the 
     distinguished Boston Latin School, but after two years, 
     contact with the Brothers in nearby Waltham was the 
     instrument of Providence that led him to heed the divine call 
     to become a disciple of St. John Baptist de La Salle. With 
     joy and fervor he entered the junior class in the Barrytown, 
     New York, juniorate in 1936. The novitiate inevitably 
     followed, where, on September 7, 1938, he was invested with 
     the religious habit and given the name Brother Casimir 
     Stephen.
       In those days, the year of novitiate in Barrytown was 
     followed by the scholasticate at De La Salle College in 
     Washington in an extension program of The Catholic 
     University. The scholasticate was supposed to continue the 
     spiritual formation begun in the novitiate, while at the same 
     time and often more successfully, providing a solid academic 
     grounding for future assignments to classroom teaching. 
     Brother Stephen was one of those chosen souls, lured by 
     Brother Charles Henry, into the major in Latin and Greek that 
     was usually reserved for the intellectual elite. Brother 
     Stephen did very well and graduated magna cum laude and Phi 
     Beta Kappa.
       There was more to the scholasticate experience than prayer 
     and study; manual labor and recreational activities provided 
     humanity and balance. In the early 1940s, Brother Abdon Lewis 
     presided over the student tailor shop where Brother Stephen 
     was assigned to the ironing board. Monastic silence was 
     rarely observed and duels were fought, sometimes with words, 
     sometimes with yardsticks. In a student production of 
     Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brother Stephen played the cameo 
     role of Cicero opposite Brother Leo Chorman's Cassius. 
     Although always willing to wax eloquent as occasion 
     warranted, Brother Stephen never attained the oratorical 
     eloquence for which the historical Cicero has been known 
     through the ages. Student athletics were also much in vogue 
     in those days, with organized leagues on Thursday afternoons 
     and in the summers, but Brother Stephen, like most of his 
     fellow Latin majors, such as Austin O'Malley, James Kaiser, 
     Joseph Warganz and Luke Salm, never got beyond handball and 
     an occasional try at the free-for-all version of basketball 
     known as horse-O. Leo Chorman was an exception.
       After four years, the carefree student days, as all good 
     things do, came to an end. In September 1943, Brother Stephen 
     and his classmates set forth to face the challenges of the 
     classroom, extracurricular activities, graduate study and 
     community life. For Brother Stephen, the venue was St. 
     Peter's in Staten Island, where he taught mostly Latin, his 
     major, but also, as needed, algebra, geometry, English, 
     history and French. After school and during summers, he 
     pursued successfully a master's degree in Latin at Manhattan 
     College under the direction of the rigorous and relentless 
     Brother Alban Dooley. In 1948, Brother Stephen was assigned 
     to St. Mary's in Waltham, Massachusetts, as teacher and sub-
     director of the community. He was, thus, able to be close to 
     his family and at the same time attend courses at Boston 
     College, earning a second M.A., this time in philosophy.
       With such a strong background in classical languages and 
     philosophy, in 1953 Brother Stephen was sent back to The 
     Catholic University to study for the doctorate in sacred 
     theology, a program only recently made available to the 
     Brothers. In addition to full-time study, the assignment also 
     involved full-time teaching of the classics and theology to 
     the scholastics and, in due time, administrative duties as 
     pro-director and director of studies. One of his signature 
     courses was on God, One and Three, that earned for him the 
     nickname ``God.'' When Brother Cornelius Luke, the Visitor 
     General, heard of it, he was not amused. Writing under the 
     inspired direction of Father Eugene Burke, Brother Stephen 
     successfully defended his thesis on what the Council of Trent 
     had to say about grace and merit, was awarded the STD degree 
     in 1959, and then assigned to Manhattan College.
       At Manhattan, Brother Stephen was an important addition to 
     the department of theology, still in the process of becoming 
     an academic department with a qualified and professionally 
     active full-time faculty. Brother Stephen regularly attended 
     the meetings of the Catholic Theological Society and the 
     College Theology Society for which he served as treasurer 
     from 1960 to 1970. He authored the article on merit for the 
     New Catholic Encyclopedia and his collection of articles 
     entitled Readings in Sacramental Theology was published by 
     Prentice-Hall. Meanwhile Brother Abdon Lewis was nudging 
     Brother Stephen in the direction of administration, at first 
     having him assist in the dean's office, then urging Brother 
     Gregory to name him academic vice president and later 
     executive vice president and Provost. Thus, Brother Stephen 
     became a hands-down choice to become president of the College 
     when Brother Gregory Nugent resigned in 1975.
       By that time, the student unrest of the late 1960s had 
     pretty well quieted down, the cooperative program with the 
     College of Mount St. Vincent was well underway, and Manhattan 
     itself had officially gone coed, bringing and ever-increasing 
     number of female students to the campus. In 1978, Brother 
     Stephen presided over the celebration of the College's 125th 
     anniversary that was followed in the next year by the 
     construction of the Draddy Gymnasium. During his presidency, 
     programs for teaching the handicapped were introduced, as 
     well as an M.B.A. program and courses in professional ethics, 
     biotechnology and computer science. In 1979, he was awarded 
     an honorary doctorate of laws by La Salle College in 
     Philadelphia. Determined to keep the Brothers in the 
     forefront, he commissioned Fabian Zaccone to paint a new 
     mural for the reredos in the College chapel, which was 
     renamed the Chapel of De La Salle and his Brothers. He had 
     the same painter do a mural for the president's dining room 
     depicting the successive Brother Presidents and their 
     contributions to the College. For the tercentenary of the 
     Institute in 1980, he sponsored a series of lectures that 
     were then published. In addition, he made arrangements to 
     have the shrine of St. De La Salle in St. Patrick's Cathedral 
     redecorated to include the newly canonized Brothers Miguel 
     and Mutien-Marie.
       Although Brother Stephen certainly enjoyed being president, 
     not all his record breaking twelve years in that office were 
     full of sweetness and life. There were the inevitable 
     conflicts with administrators and faculty, and some serious 
     problems with a declining enrollment and consequent financial 
     strain. He had always been close to his family and in 
     constant touch with his brother John, a Jesuit priest at 
     Boston College, and Sister Margaret de Sales, who was then 
     principal at Paramus Catholic High School. He felt very 
     deeply the deaths of his mother, his older sister, and that 
     of his brother John. In 1980, Brother Stephen suffered the 
     first of a series of heart attacks that eventually required 
     surgery. After having organized and financed the first 
     session of the Buttimer Institute of Lasallian Studies, it 
     was a disappointment for him when the facilities of the 
     College proved inadequate and the program was moved to 
     California. Eventually it became clear to Brother Stephen 
     that he no longer had the energy to complete his third five-
     year term. On his retirement from office in 1987, more than 
     600 guests gathered at a banquet in the Draddy Gymnasium to 
     honor his achievement. In that same year, the College of 
     Mount St. Vincent honored him with the honorary doctorate in 
     humane letters.
       After leaving Manhattan College, Brother Stephen moved to 
     Lincroft, where he took charge of the development office. He 
     initiated an outreach program to the entire

[[Page S14783]]

     Lasallian family, especially relatives of the Brothers and 
     former Brothers, based on the concept of stewardship for the 
     Lasallian tradition. ``Associates in Stewardship'' was a 
     constant theme in his quarterly publication called Lasallian 
     Notes. He took special care to celebrate the lives of the 
     deceased Brothers and to keep in contact with their families, 
     most notably through the annual Memorial Mass. Involved as he 
     was in public relations for the district, Brother Stephen 
     never lost his association with Manhattan College. He rarely 
     missed a formal college event, alumni gathering, funeral or 
     social occasion, traveling from Lincroft by hired limo when 
     he could no longer drive and serving as a kind of informal 
     public relations person for the College. When the strain of 
     his very active retirement proved to be too much for his 
     declining physical resources, he retired reluctantly but 
     gracefully in 2004, at age 83, and took up residence in De La 
     Salle Hall. There, he died peacefully on January 9, 2007.

       --Luke Salm, F.S.C.

                          ____________________