Representative John W. Sullivan View All Years

HONORABLE JOHN W. SULLIVAN

MR. SPEAKER: Your committee, appointed to prepare resolutions commemorating the life and public service of the late Honorable John W. Sullivan, of Kossuth county, begs leave to submit the following report:

John W. Sullivan was born in La Salle, Illinois, on June 13, 1862, and died at his home in Algona, Iowa, August 19, 1931, being sixty-nine years and two months of age.

When John W. Sullivan was nine years of age his parents moved to Johnson county, Iowa, where they resided on a farm. He attended the public schools of Johnson county. Later he attended Hiatt’s Academy at Iowa City, Iowa, and after finishing a two-year course there, attended the Iowa State University. He was graduated from the law department of that university in 1887.

After his graduation Mr. Sullivan entered the practice of law in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he remained for one year. He then returned to Iowa City where he entered the law office of the late Judge Martin J. Wade. In 1890 he moved to Algona, Iowa, where he engaged in the practice of law alone.

On January 24, 1894, Mr. Sullivan formed a law partnership with S. E. McMahon, who had then graduated from the law department of the State University of Michigan. That partnership, without a shadow of misunderstanding, continued until Mr. Sullivan’s death, a period of more than thirty-seven years. In 1920, L. E. Linnan, who had just graduated from the law department of the Iowa State University, joined the firm.

Mr. Sullivan was married in April, 1925, to Essie Cordingly, the daughter of one of the pioneer families of Kossuth county. His faithful wife and one son, W. Wade Sullivan; a brother, Daniel Sullivan, and two sisters, Kate and Nellie Sullivan, survive him.

John W. Sullivan was an ideal citizen and always had at heart the best interests of his home, his profession, his community and his state and was ever ready and willing to contribute his services to the development and success of every worthy public or private enterprise and to the upbuilding and betterment of the community in which he lived.

In 1897, Mr. Sullivan was elected a member of the Board of Directors of the Independent School District of Algona, where he continued as a member until his resignation due to ill health, in 1927. During the last twenty-three years of his term he was president of the board.

In 1915 he successfully defeated the attempted division of Kossuth county, and during the same year was elected a member of the Thirty sixth General Assembly, where he continued that fight and by his able leadership defeated and ended the desire and attempt to divide the county.

Mr. Sullivan was president of the Kossuth County Bar Association from its organization until his death. He was a charter member of the Algona Rotary Club and a golf enthusiast. His interests centered in his home, his community and the practice of law. He was an untiring student and entertained a very high standard of professional ethics and was the embodiment of professional honor and rectitude. He sought diligently to impress these high ideals upon the younger members of the legal profession with whom he was acquainted. Although a tireless worker and painstaking student and possessed of a keen legal mind, and recognized judicial ability, he was extremely modest and retiring and ever ready to extend due consideration to the opinion and judgment of others.

In politics Mr. Sullivan was truly a Jeffersonian Democrat and a firm believer in the principles of government so clearly announced and ably advocated by the sage of Monticello.

Therefore, Be It Resolved by the House of Representatives of the Forty-fifth General Assembly of the State of Iowa, That the foregoing memorial be adopted as its appreciation of the life and public service of the Honorable John W. Sullivan.

Be It Further Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be spread upon the records of this House, and an enrolled copy thereof be sent to the family of the deceased.

A. H. BONNSTETTER,

P. H. DONLON,

E. J. MANIECE,

Committee.

Unanimously adopted April 11, 1933.