Mark Sullivan

At the age of three I had an unrelenting need for adventure that drew me to sneak into my mother’s kitchen pantry, a forbidden area of the house. It was a magical place with many shiny and sharp tools, knives, bowls and serving trays. One day, I found the skeleton key in a glass jar and opened the pantry door. I was nervous and excited. Surprisingly, no one was around. Beyond the open door I found much to take in. At the very top of the floor-to-ceiling shelves were some amazingly bright and shiny, yellow objects that were calling out to me.

With no time to spare, I pulled out the heavy wooden oak bureau drawers adjacent to the shelves. As I climbed on to the top drawer, I attempted to balance my little body, as I stretched to reach out to the very tippy-top shelf. Then, for a moment, I had one of those shiny sharp objects in my hand. A pencil! As I lunged for it, I lost my balance and screamed. I fell five feet from the top drawer, crashing to the floor with the pencil lodged in my throat. The oldest of my three sisters found her usually very active, younger brother on the pantry floor quite still, listless and turning purple.

The emergency room doctors told my distraught parents that with the fall, combined with a pencil in my upper trachea, had blocking oxygen to the speech centers of my brain. They somberly suggested that I may not be able to talk again. If you are lucky, they told my parents, they might be able to understand me, but most people would not.
That moment and the many more to follow was the beginning of a journey from trouble, and many years later to triumph, with everything in between.

The Journey Begins. 

In kindergarten and the early grade school years, children in the playground would taunt me with names such as “mumbles Mark” and “retard.” Teachers were afraid to call on me given my unusual speech intonations that could punctuate the classroom with awkward moments of shock, silence and embarrassment — by me, and by extension, them. In first grade, I would walk home alone with schoolwork full of red marks all over my paper work. I didn’t know what it meant, but I guessed it was not good. So, I hid most of my work in bushes behind our garage until I could burn it in the outdoor fireplace on weekends. There were moments, many moments, when I was not proud of being me. I wanted to speak out in the worst of way, to be heard, to be me – a loved and capable me, whatever that meant. Yet I was scared to death in doing so. I was confused, lonely, fearful, angry, and eager for a better way.

Two truly bright and exceptional individuals came to the aid of that scared little boy. One, was a strong-willed, independent, loving, determined, Irish American woman, raised in the Depression on almost nothing. She was a WWII nurse that later contracted polio while helping others with the same; ending up wheelchair bound. With months of no progress while lying in the quarantined, open-air polio hospital bed, she incredulously checked herself out of the state institution and singularly willed herself back to health and mobility. She exemplified a never-say-die spirit that defined how passion, purpose and presence could make the aspirational real; the tragic not so much; and the future better than the painful present could foretell. This woman was my mother, Florence Sullivan.
The second was a tough, German American speech therapist, Miss Haus. She never married, but many knew her as married to a mission of bringing the voiceless into the speaking world. Miss Haus was known for rigorous, disciplined, non-stop coaching for the speechless, the incurables in the 1950s, who no one else could help. For more than 48 years she had changed the lives of many hundreds of boys and girls all across New England. I was one of them.

As a boy, one of the ways I could find enjoyment was to climb our big century-old trees in our yard. I would climb as high as I could. One day, when I was high aloft in the big elm tree leaning next to the kitchen, I inadvertently overheard my mother yelling at my father. Somehow, she said, we need to teach this boy to talk. Even if it kills us. He’s going to talk. Both wailed and wept, and I had trouble climbing down the tree. I felt I was broken in need of repair. Was I worth it?

I did not know it, but my mother had been looking all over New England to find the best speech therapist. She learned it would be Miss Haus, in Worcester, Massachusetts, or no one. With me in tow, she arrived un-invited to Miss Haus’s office late one summer afternoon. We found the office full of boxes as Miss Haus was packing. My mother immediately explained what was needed; to which Miss Haus explained she was retiring, packing and literally going home for the last time. My mother said she could not do that as she had one more boy to save. Miss Haus forcefully stated she was retired and to find someone else. So, it began: two strong-willed, independent women, both loud and determined, not accepting what the other had to say.

During this scary verbal volley, I stood shaken in the back corner of the room. Somehow, the therapist in Miss Haus caused her to stop for a moment, turn around and look at me. To this day I remember she stooped down and looked at me, eyeball to eyeball. “What do you want Marky?” she asked. “Make it go away. Make it all go away,” I replied. She knew exactly what I meant. She had spent almost five decades helping the emotionally abandoned, timid and lost.

She turned back to my mother and said she was still retired, but to deliver me to her living room every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9 a.m. for cookies, milk and speech therapy for six months. She told my mother she would have to work with me the other six days a week. Seven years later, the six months was completed. I could talk. Thousands of hours of practicing with marbles and marshmallows rolling in my mouth, and countless other exercises, day and night, had paid off.

But I didn’t feel done. I moved from speech therapy to speech craft. I competed in every speech contest I could get into from grade school to high school. I hungered for the trophies and the attention. I didn’t know how much I was trying to fill a gaping hole in my soul with affirmation and acceptance. To be accepted as lovable and capable. The speech tournament trophies meant I might be valued by someone other than my family and Miss Haus. I came from a loving family but was bruised so badly I needed more.

In my senior year of high school, I was competing in my last speech tournament, a national one hosted by Readers Digest magazine. I had already won the All-City, County, District and State tournament. Now I had qualified for the finals. The night before my last speech I was staying in a hotel. The front desk delivered a Western Union telegram to my room. It was from Miss Haus, now actually retired and living in a nursing home. The city newspapers had run an article about me: Local boy makes good in national competition, with the background detailing my speech accident. Someone had read the story to Miss Haus. She wrote me:
“Mark, I have heard of your recent success. You have done well – but probably could have done better! (This was her very discerning and demanding ways coming through even now! I couldn’t help but chuckle). Regardless, Mark, I want you to know that by your efforts, you have singularly validated the life of a very old lady who in her dying days knows she can now go to rest recognizing my gift to you and others made a difference. You have given far more to me, than I to you. Now, it’s your turn, your time to step up and share what you have with those in need, as you have God’s gift waiting to be multiplied. So tomorrow, do your best, but know that what matters is what you do after tomorrow, with competence and confidence[ The quote is based on memory and could vary slightly in word count but certainly not in message or intent as recalled by the author.].”

The next day, I didn’t win. But I felt I did. For the night before, I held Miss Haus’s Western Union message in my hand and shook and cried uncontrollably for a long time. I didn’t realize at that moment, it was the beginning of a purge at my deepest and most inner core of many years of toxic, painful moments. No surprise, Miss Haus’s final gift to me was a challenge to be my biggest, boldest, best self, not simply for a contest, but for life.

Several decades later, the pained, voiceless halting schoolboy had grown up into something almost unimaginable. He was now an Eagle Scout, a Harvard alumnus, a Ph.D. graduate, father of three successful growing young men, husband to an incredibly kind, smart, loving wife, a business executive, C-level officer and an organizational psychologist. Something had happened. Was life perfect? No. But the tectonic plates that had shaped my interior life and outer world had moved in both an evolutionary and revolutionary manner.

How the Story Grew

Since the earliest of those scary days, I started to think about what happens when trouble visits others. Does effort, intellect, emotion and willpower address what is needed under duress, or is there more to the story?

Why is it that some of the smart and strong succumb and the weak and worn may thrive? Is it simply luck or happenstance? Why is it we can have an amazing capacity to perform at a high functioning level at one point, and later find ourselves struggling?
How do we thrive when resistance and its accompanying force for destruction and control push us back to a safer, known, but less functional place? Or worse, to a space of not knowing, one filled with confusion, fear or frustration. How do we create a thriving ecosystem that nurtures capability, competence and confidence in the eye of the storm?

Interestingly, self-help books, leadership tomes, training workshops, and motivational speakers don’t always provide the insight and informed action to guide our way through the many forms that trouble presents itself? Think dieting, change workshops, addiction counseling, performance coaching, etc. Why, when we know or see the answer, it is not good enough. For example, how can health care workers overeat, drink or smoke when they know better? Additionally, why can early success set us up for later disappointment? Clearly, self-help books with all their prescriptions for the masses have not always held sway in any sustainable fashion. Why is that willpower and resilience, as important as they are, do not inoculate us from the full force of trouble’s trajectory?

Many of the above questions have led me to look at the heroes and demons in our lives; to research, social history and to the great leaders of our times. I looked at my own life and wondered what it would be like without the kind of tough, but loving, care and support I received at the right time. I wondered what my life would have been if I gave in to a host of competing impulses pleading for safety, comfort and sameness. Could I find redemption for the moments where I actually did give in? Could I appreciate the moments when out of desperation, or faith, I trusted the better angels in myself and others when I saw no light at the end of the tunnel?
Finally, I wondered what I would be like if I never had such an accident, or if I had a consequential one later in life with a different set of resources, or lack thereof. The promise of potential and performance with the spiritual salve of solace and safety may often seem attractive yet elusive. It becomes far less abstract when challenge gets the best of us. As good as we are as deserving as we are.