Carmen Lucila Sullivan

Carmen Lucila Ortiz was born on June 29, 1927, in Weiser, Idaho, to Alfonso and Luz Ortiz and was one of five daughters.  In her long and remarkable life, she played many key roles in the development of the country and its history.

Young Miss Ortiz was a child of the depression and learned to waste nothing and while dutifully plodding uphill to school in the snow wearing bread bags on her feet and cardboard in her shoes.  For the next eight decades, she took it upon herself to remind others how difficult that period was for many.

 She attended Huntington, Oregon schools where she observed many arguments amongst her sisters, mainly due to the unsanctioned use of each other's garments.  In high school she met a young man, Robert (Bobby) Sullivan, with whom she had one date but decided he was just too arrogant to spend another minute with.  She later enrolled at the St. Francis Academy in Baker, Oregon, where she was implicated in the infamous "St. Francis Plate Throwing Episode, " in which dozens of plates were broken under the auspices of washing dishes.

During her time at the Academy, she would occasionally ride the train home to Huntington to work a few shifts waiting tables for extra money which lead to her being the first to protest Women's Rights when a lecherous cook/owner of the restaurant inappropriately "patted her rear" she took it upon herself to incarcerate the scofflaw in the walk-in freezer for nearly two hours while she dutifully took orders, cooked and ran the entire restaurant. Not another word was said by the owner until she saw him forty-five years later he still had frosty words about the incident.

After graduating from St. Francis, Miss Ortiz moved to Fresno, California to do her part for the war effort by eavesdropping on conversations as a telephone operator.  One of her memorable days was after her shift had ended, she was window shopping on the way home and was admiring a beautiful dress that she could not afford but suddenly in a gust of wind a $20 bill landed between her feet telling her that destiny had decided that only she would look great in that dress.

When World War II ended, Miss Ortiz was visiting back in Oregon and met the same Bob Sullivan, who had just been discharged from the army and had suddenly become much more engaging and evidently less arrogant.  They were married on September 11,1949 and subsequently had seven children.

Mrs. Rebert E. Sullivan played many historic roles during her time raising children.  During the cold war she played a critical part in arms control by stomping on any squirt gun used indoors.  Her hard line on this matter set the tone for decades of squirt guns use and policy among generations of Sullivans.

During the Space Race, Mrs. Sullivan famously said "you kids be careful" as she carried a load of laundry past her children who were counting down the reenactment of the Gemini launch with one sibling about to roll down a flight of stairs in a cardboard box.

In subsequent years, she developed a new and progressive parenting formula in which she could simply fill in the blank along with the line:  "Any kid who is stupid enough to _______ deserves it."  She also proved herself to be an able linguist coming up with many classic euphemisms for maladies, body parts and disagreeable people.

She was preceded in death by her husband, Bob, her sisters Helen, who made great faces, Alice, who made great desserts, Maggie who was cool and invented great nicknames and Esperanza, who famously, beat a shoe salesman with a Buster Brown Box.

Carmen Sullivan is survived by all seven of her children, twelve grandchildren and three great-grandchildren all of whom sorely miss her lovely, warm and funny presence.