FRANCIS J. "KERRY" SULLIVAN, JR. • VIETNAM
Francis J. “Kerry” Sullivan, Jr., 77
Rockport, MA
Born: June 10, 1948
Born: Cambridge, MA
Raised: Cambridge & Rockport MA
Service: US Army
Rank: E-4 Specialist
Unit: 523 Signal Battalion, AmeriCal Division
Dates of Service: 1968-1969
When Francis J. Sullivan, Jr. was christened, his grandfather, who had immigrated during the potato famine, declared that there would be no Juniors in the family and that Francis would be known as Kerry, after his home county in Ireland. His parents, June & the senior Francis were both veterans of WWII. June was an Army nurse in England and France, and his father was an electrician in the Navy in the Pacific. June was part of the WWII Veterans Project in 2015.
His family spent summers in Rockport until he was 14 when they moved permanently from their home in Cambridge. He graduated from Rockport H.S. in 1966. He and his friend Walter Rich enlisted in the Navy but received deferments to attend college (Kerry) and a vocational school (Walter). Unfortunately playing pool and cards won out over academics and Kerry left Salem State and lost his deferment. In 1968 he was drafted into the Army. He trained at Fort Gordon as a radio relay carrier attendant and was shipped off to a communications bunker in Chu Lai, Vietnam.
“We got hit a lot because they wanted to knock out our communications.” In one attack, he was running toward the bunker door yelling at another solider that “they” were right on top of them. That soldier dove down and landed on top of Kerry just as an RPG round exploded about 10 feet from them. The other soldier was wounded and sent to the hospital. Kerry had no obvious injury but attributes a subdural hematoma that he experienced later in life to the “non-contact blast injury.” He also lost some hearing because of the blast. He spent 13 months in Vietnam and was shipped home in October 1969.
On his return, Kerry really wanted to get back to school. He went up to Vermont to earn money at a ski area and intended to re-enroll at Salem State for the Spring semester, but the ongoing protests and sit-ins effectively shut the university down. “Even the WWII vets were antagonistic towards the Vietnam vets saying it wasn’t a real war.” He went back to Vermont, saved money and then traveled to Australia where he had visited during a week of leave while in Vietnam. He returned to Rockport and Salem State in 1971 and received his degree in Social Work in 1975. While at school, working during the summer, he met his future wife Patricia Nelson, from Boulder, Colorado, at Front Beach. She was doing summer work in the fish factories, and he was working at the Rockport Rope & Twine. Three months after meeting, they were married and have been for 54 years. They have two children, Kacia Reilley and Kelsey Sullivan, and two grandchildren.
Kerry took a Social Studies teaching job at Gloucester’s O’Maley Middle School (12 years) and taught boat building at the Museum School and was a lifeguard for the Town of Rockport. While teaching he went to night school at New England School of Law and received his JD. Patty wanted to head back west so they moved to New Mexico where Kerry got a job as a Special Attorney General. Summers in Rockport proved too much of a lure for Kerry, so for five years he came home to Cape Ann.
In 1999, due to PTSD, he had an emotional breakdown. He began to work as an attorney with the Committee for Public Counsel, essentially a contracted court-appointed lawyer. This he did for 12 years in addition to his own private practice. Starting in 2010 he began to have serious health issues leading to multiple heart surgeries and subdural hematoma which he attributed to the blast in Chu Lai. He fully retired in 2014.
He and Patty are currently in the process of moving permanently to Corrales, New Mexico just north of Albuquerque. Kerry has been writing a book about his experiences and recovery from his brain injury called The Long Triage.