Little Sister Alice Ann Sullivan
Alice Ann Sullivan was born on October 6, 1938 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She was raised on a beautiful lake in the isolated town of Boulder Junction, Wisconsin quite far from the closest town. Her love for fishing dates from these early years. She was an avid over- the -top fan of the Green Bay Packers. She rarely missed watching them play on TV wherever she lived throughout her life.
In 1960, right after college, Alice moved to Alaska as a Lay Jesuit volunteer where she taught at the St. Mary’s Mission School. Her love for Native people began there. It was through some of the young women of St. Mary’s that she learned about the Community of The Little Sisters of Jesus.
She joined the Community in 1963 with her initial training in Washington D.C.
In 1965, she was sent to Bay James, Canada to live among the Cree Indians for two years.
She arrived in Fairbanks shortly before the big flood of 1967.
After a winter on Little Diomede Island, she went to Europe for theology and Bible studies. She made her final vows in 1971 and went back to the Bay James area for another two years. She always spoke of that time of her life with a lot of fondness.
Beginning in 1973 she lived mostly in Nome until she retired to Anchorage in 2014. She cherished spending time visiting with the King Island people. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Alice, along with other Little Sisters, spent two decades learning to live the subsistence lifestyle of the King Islanders. In 1979, the Sisters were given permission to camp at Woolley Lagoon. She hunted moose and fished for king crab and codfish in the Bering Sea. Ever determined and always physically fit, Alice waded out into the ocean to set a salmon net every summer.
A lover of nature, she spent many days exploring the tundra, picking berries and mostly bird watching. She knew each family of ravens in the Nome area. She was an avid, enthusiastic birder often interviewed on KNOM for her expertise.
In Nome, when there was not a parish priest at St. Joseph Catholic Church, she helped with the mass, celebrations and gave very meaningful reflections, nourished by her prayer and her reading on theology.
Her love for the people of Alaska led her to work in drug and alcohol abuse treatment centers in Anchorage, to study to become a counselor and develop a culturally sensitive method of treatment.
Whenever she had a chance to travel and meet other Little Sisters of the Community, they all were touched by her enthusiasm for life, for Alaska and her joy in meeting them.
In 1999, Alice became a treasured and valued volunteer at the City of Nome’s Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum on Front Street. She would spend at least two days a week over the next 15 years as a highly regarded expert on the history of Nome and the Bering Strait Region and, of course, birds! She loved the Iditarod, running out of the Museum to greet every musher especially Dee Dee Jonrowe.
She was avid reader, with a fondness for American history. She loved to share her discoveries.
Her interest in history and the life of the Indigenous people led to research which created the genealogy and family tree of all the King Island families.
In the fall of 2018, she went to live at the Pioneer Home in Anchorage, joining three other Little Sisters including Damiene Hoehn, her mentor. Alice would say how lucky she was to live there and how thankful she was for the care and concern she received.
She wrote, “I want to build a deeply spiritual, stable and meaningful life for myself. I have the resources I need. The books, friends & all those other people in the home who are lonely, sick and need a good listener and some spiritual input if they want. I think this can be a very productive era in my life.”
Her love for the Community and her appreciation of the dedication of the Little Sisters who first came to Alaska led her to read all of their diaries and to put in writing “Our Story - History of The Little Sisters of Jesus in Alaska” which was published in 2018.
Little Sister Alice did indeed enjoy life, food, laughter and fun. She had an upbeat spirit and a childlike ability to marvel and appreciate the little joys of life. She made life-long friendships and retained her love for God, for the Sisters of her Community and the peoples among whom she lived.
She had an insatiable desire to live life to its fullest.
In the fall of 2022, Little Sister Alice wrote, “This morning while reflecting on my life-all I could say was THANK YOU. First to my parents who did a pretty good job of raising me and then accepted that I was not going to follow the usual path-get married and have a family…..instead I flew off to Alaska !! I have many things to be grateful for in my life-including our relationship-that I thanked God for….I have had a good life….”
“ So often I remember the good times we had together. All my love, Alice”
Sister Alice Ann Sullivan died at 86 years young of natural causes on Saturday, November 30, 2024. She was a resident of the Anchorage, Alaska Pioneer Home.