Former S-R Reporter Kathleen O’Sullivan Dies
Kathleen O’Sullivan, a trail-blazing woman reporter who knew the Spokane County Courthouse better than most attorneys, will be buried today after a 10 a.m. funeral Mass at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church.
“Sully,” as she was known to hundreds of attorneys, judges and county officials, died Friday in Seattle after suffering a stroke. She was 88.
The daughter of James E. “Big Jim” O’Sullivan, one of the driving forces behind Grand Coulee Dam, she began working at The Spokesman-Review in 1943.
Because most men were being drafted for World War II, the newspaper began hiring women to handle assignments previously covered by men, recalled Dorothy Powers, a longtime friend who was hired at the same time and later became the paper’s associate editor.
Before that time, most women covered only society news - weddings, teas and garden parties.
“She was one of the first women news reporters,” Powers said.
O’Sullivan soon began covering the courthouse, which included all trials, hearings and county government offices. She became a mentor to younger reporters, offering them tips and an occasional meal at her home.
“She just went along, day in and day out, and just wrote miles of copy,” Powers said. “She kept a confidence if the judges asked her to, but she never slanted a story. I would doubt there was ever a retraction” on a story she wrote.
O’Sullivan worked for the newspaper for 30 years.
Jim Gillespie, a former deputy prosecutor now in private practice, said O’Sullivan was quiet and unobtrusive.
“She was very self-effacing,” he said. “But she was very hard to B.S.”
He did know of one story that O’Sullivan wrote that was never printed. During a hearing before Superior Court Judge Ralph Foley, a defendant who was a mental patient decided he’d testified long enough.
“He turned to the judge and said, ‘Curly, let’s take a recess,’ and went over and sat down next to his attorney,” Gillespie recalled. “Judge Foley was bald as a billiard ball. When I think of Sully, I think of that story.”
O’Sullivan lived for many years with her mother in a fifth-floor apartment in the old Ridpath Hotel. When the hotel caught fire in 1950, she rushed to the hotel to check on her mother, ran up the stairs, then followed her mother down the fire escape. Then, wrapped in a blanket, she covered the fire through the night from the sidewalk as the hotel burned down.
Ann Nachtigal, O’Sullivan’s niece, said the hotel fire was one of the many stories her “Aunt Sis” told to her grandnieces and grandnephews.
She kept her self-effacing demeanor both on and off the job.
“She was one of the gentlest people I know. Never had a bad word about anyone,” said the Rev. John Donnelly, who knew O’Sullivan both from her work as a volunteer editor on the Inland Register and later as a parishioner at St. Anthony’s.
She is survived by her nieces, Nachtigal, and Marnie O’Sullivan, and a nephew, James O’Sullivan, all of Seattle; and eight grandnieces and grandnephews.
Burial will be at Holy Cross Cemetery with Hennessey-Smith Funeral Home in charge of arrangements.
Memorial contributions may be made to SpokAnimal C.A.R.E. or to the Jesuit Alaska Missions in care of Rev. William Dibb, S.J., 2890 N. Kobuk, Fairbanks, Alaska 99709.
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