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Sammy's Spirit Will Help Build Homes For Kids

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Steve Otto

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 19, 2008

How do you measure loss? How do you deal with it?

If you're lucky, most of your losses are material ones. They are the things that can be replaced - a wrecked car, a lost ring. Even victims who have lost homes to the storms that have smashed into our coastlines will be able to rebuild, to start over.

But what happens when you lose a son or a daughter? Any parent has at least a sense of the nightmare that must envelop you. It is the one thing you cannot replace. I'm not sure you can ever completely overcome such a tragedy. About all you can do, I would think, would be to go on, to try and find meaning after such a loss.

That is Joe and Brenda Sullivan's odyssey. It is a journey with a positive ending that will make a difference in lives otherwise lost.

It was 1996 when Joe Sullivan packed up and left his beloved Buffalo to come to Tampa for his health insurance company. "Well, I didn't love it so much in the winter, but I do miss the wings and the great pizza," he says of New York.

Joe changed jobs, actually starting his own consulting business. He also met Brenda while hanging out with friends at Four Green Fields in Hyde Park. She not only loved wings, she turned out to be from Buffalo, and in 2002 they were married. A year later Sammy Sullivan was born. Life was good. Joe's business began to grow, and they purchased a home in FishHawk, outside of Brandon.

'What Do You Do?'

It was almost two years later, in September 2005, that Sammy came down with what appeared to be the flu. "We took him to the doctor," Joe says, "and that's what the doctor said it was. He told us it should improve in a few days."

That was Friday. On Saturday, they again called the doctor and were given a prescription. Sunday morning, Brenda walked into Sammy's room and he was dead.

"What do you do?" says Joe. "It was a bacterial pneumonia, but that didn't really matter. You get angry; you get bitter but you also realize, after the initial shock, you have to move on. There are two ways you can go. You can let the negative overwhelm the rest of your life, or you can go forward.

"We decided we wanted to do something that would be positive. Somewhere in the grief counseling we had heard that if we took on a project it would be as good for us as it would the project."

Children In Crisis

The Sullivans found Dottie Berger-MacKinnon, who has done so much as Joshua House director and is now involved with a new project called Kids Charity of Tampa Bay. It is building a

$5 million complex of homes for 60 children in crisis. These are kids who have been removed from homes and no foster homes are available.

Two years ago the Sullivans put together a golf tournament in Sammy's name and have made enough from two tournaments to get one house nearly completed. This year's tourney will be Oct. 17 at Summerfield. "What has been amazing," Joe says, "is the sponsors who have been so generous. People like BlueCross BlueShield, Digital Insurance, United Healthcare. Cigna and so many more have helped us make this new home a reality."

It's a great event, not just for the kids but for the sanity of Joe and Brenda. You can still put together a foursome, or just show up. For information go to www.sammysullivancharities.org.

Keyword, Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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