Waterloo Sullivan family members feted at White House event, conference
Posted
by Pat Kinney
on Tuesday, October 14, 2025
The descendants of Waterloo’s five Sullivan brothers killed during World War II were among those hosted at a White House event honoring families of military personnel killed in combat or the line of duty.
Kelly Sullivan, a third-grade teacher at Lincoln Elementary School in Cedar Falls, and her brother John Sullivan of the Kansas City metro area, attended the reception for selected “gold star families,” hosted by President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. The Sullivans are the grandchildren of Albert Sullivan, the youngest of the five brothers and the only one who married.
Kelly and John Sullivan were able to meet individually with the president and First Lady, as well as Vice President JD Vance, a Marine Corps Iraq war veteran, and his wife Usha.
The event included dinner and a military musical ensemble. Family representatives of 20 individuals who died in military service were honored. Candles were lit for each of the fallen — including one for each of the five Sullivans.
“We were the only ones from World War II,” Kelly Sullivan said. “It was very special because the people who were there are all Gold Star families. So we all share a common bond that nobody wants to have. Yet we do.” Many had lost loved ones in more recent conflicts.
Kelly and John Sullivan’s grandfather Albert and his brothers George, Francis, Joseph and Madison and all but 14 of their nearly 700 shipmates were killed when their ship the cruiser USS Juneau, was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine in the Solomon Island chain on Nov. 13, 1942.
The Juneau and other battle-damaged American ships were returning from the naval Battle of Guadalcanal at the time. The outgunned U.S. ships had turned back a Japanese task force headed for the embattled Marine garrison on the island.
The five brothers’ deaths are the greatest combat-related loss of life suffered by one family at one time in U.S. military history.
Kelly Sullivan is the official Navy sponsor of the destroyer USS The Sullivans DDG-68, an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer commissioned in 1997 and named for her grandfather and great uncles.
The ship, based in Mayport, Fla., just returned from a combat deployment to the Middle East a few months ago, in which it launched missile attacks against Houthi terrorists in Yemen and shot down Iranian missiles targeted for Israel in the 12-day Israel-Iran war this past spring. The ship’s commanding officer, U.S. Navy Cmdr. Mathew Rechkemmer, is a graduate of Iowa State University.
Sullivan said she put in a good word for her ship and crew in one-on-one time with the president. “He knew the story of the five Sullivans, and I made sure to invite him to visit the Navy’s finest warship,” she said. “John said I was doing a good sales job. I said ‘You have the greatest fleet in the world, Mr. President, but your greatest ship is the USS The Sullivans.’ “
It’s the second time she’s met a sitting president. She also represented Gold Star families in a 50th anniversary commemoration of the end of World War II in 1995 with President Bill Clinton.
Last month, Sullivan also participated in a historic preservation conference with representatives from the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command at the Buffalo & Erie County Naval & Military Park and Family Museum at Buffalo, N.Y. That is where the first ship named for her grandfather and great uncles is moored.
That first ship, the USS The Sullivans DD-537, commissioned by President Franklin Roosevelt and sponsored by Kelly Sullivan’s great grandmother Alleta Sullivan, saw action in World War II, Korea and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis before being decommissioned and docked at Buffalo. It was dubbed “The Good Samaritan” for rescuing large numbers of sailors and downed airmen during World War II. The brothers’ uncle, Patrick Henry Sullivan of Harpers Ferry in Northeast Iowa, served on that ship during World War II.
Both ships sport a large green shamrock in honor of the Sullivan brothers’ Irish heritage.
A day after the White House event, Kelly Sullivan was back on the job — taking her third graders to the Waterloo’s Grout Museum District and the Sullivan Brothers Iowa Veterans Museum for a week of “Museum School” activities, a program the Grout district has put on for decades.
Part of the Museum School program includes the kids visiting with military veterans who attend a weekly free veterans coffee at the museum from 10 a.m. to noon. every Wednesday. About 30 to 50 veterans attend weekly.
Sullivan’s students received a gift back from the veterans this week. Roger Pease, a 95-year-old Navy Korean War veteran from Cedar Falls, purchased and donated several hundred miniature American flags for the veterans to hand out to the kids to show some appreciation for their visit.
It was little token of gratitude across the generations — a bit of living history for the students from those who helped “secure the blessings of liberty” for those young people — and from a teacher whose family members made the ultimate sacrifice in that cause.