YOUNG WIDOW OF SULLIVAN BROTHER WILL TAKE JOB IN

WAR PLANT TO “CARRY ON”

Mrs. Katherine Sullivan and son, Jimmy

Because she wants to carry on for her young husband, Albert – one of Waterloo’s five fighting Sullivan brothers who lost their lives last November in a naval battle off the Solomon islands – Mrs. Katherine B. Sullivan, 20, will become a war plant worker here this winter.

A mother at 17 and then widowed at 19 when the Sullivan brothers went down with their cruiser, the U.S.S. Juneau, Mrs. Sullivan revealed here yesterday she has been offered employment at the Waterloo Valve Spring Compressor Co., one of the city’s industrial plants now in war production.

The son was born to Albert and Katherine Sullivan, young Jimmy Sullivan, now on his way to a third birthday, will continue to make his home with Mr. and Mrs. Thomas F. Sullivan, 98 Adams street, when Mrs. Katherine Sullivan goes to work.

Has Regained Strength.
Her decision to enter war work, she said, was “something I’ve been thinking about quite a while.”

Recovered from a serious illness which sent her to a local hospital last May, the young widow said she might have gone into a defense plant months ago, if there had been someone to take care of her son. 

The parents of the Sullivan boys, at whose home Mrs. Katherine Sullivan and Jimmy have resided, spent several months on a navy-sponsored tour of the east and west coasts, seeking to speed up war plant and shipyard production.

Home again, they have been called to Hollywood, Cal., to oversee the shooting of several important scenes of the forthcoming motion picture, ‘The Sullivans,” now being filmed at the Sam Jaffe studios, with proceeds to provide an education for Jimmy Sullivan and help Navy relief.

Plans Indefinite Yet
A sister-in-law of the young widow, Genevieve Sullivan, is now a member of the WAVES, in training at Iowa State Teachers college after serving some time as a recruiter.

The young and attractive widow, who says she feels “Albert would be proud to know I was going to take a war job,” has made no definite plans yet for Jimmy, who’ll be three years old next February.

Some day, she hopes, the son will receive an appointment to the United States  naval academy at Annapolis, Md., and follow his father uncles in the naval service.

“However,” she commented, “I’m going to wait for a while and see what he wants to be.  You can’t make a boy follow some particular career unless he wants to do it.”

“And,” she remarked, “Jimmy’s got quite a few years to figure out something for himself, at that.”

Source: The Waterloo Daily Courier, October 24, 1943