PITTSBURGH — Mike Sullivan will always remember the night he found his mother, Myrna, on the back deck wearing slippers and a nightgown — and wielding a hammer.
She had asked Mike and his high school buddies to tear down the old deck at their home in the coastal community of Marshfield, Mass., and build a new one. But when summer jobs and baseball games pushed that chore to the back burner, Mrs. Sullivan got tired of waiting. Out in the darkness, she started ripping up the deck boards herself.
“That was my mother,” the Penguins coach said with a laugh. “She would ask you to do things around the house. You might get a couple chances. If you didn’t get to it, she was going to take matters into her own hands.”
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded over the last year, Sullivan has thought often of his late mother and that roll-up-your-sleeves mentality.
On numerous occasions, he’s publicly thanked the nurses, doctors and others who have worked on the front lines. When Sullivan expresses his appreciation, he's speaking as someone who has seen firsthand some of the sacrifice and commitment it takes to fulfill a role in the medical community.
The Penguins’ hard-nosed coach was raised by a nurse. He married a nurse. And, before too long, there may soon be one more nurse in the family.
“Most of the people that are in the medical field, based on my experience, do it because it’s a passion. It’s a calling,” Sullivan said. “They want to help people. That’s what drives them every day when they get up in the morning.”
With National Nurses Day on Thursday and Mother’s Day on Sunday, Sullivan reflected on the strong women who molded him and the nurses around the world who have taken up their hammers to help fight the pandemic.
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Ask anyone about Myrna Sullivan and they’ll tell you she was a special woman with lots of close friends, a strong voice and a gentle heart.
Born in 1937, Mrs. Sullivan grew up in South Boston, where people are tough because they have to be. She graduated from St. Elizabeth’s School of Nursing in 1954 and had been working as a registered nurse for years before marrying George Sullivan in 1959.
Before long, the Irish Catholic household was bursting at the seams with five kids — George, Kathie, Deborah, Mike and Brian. All five were headed in different directions, the girls to figure skating competitions and the boys to whatever sport was in season.
“I can only imagine we were a handful,” said Mike Sullivan, the second-youngest. “My mother, she was the rock, making sure everybody got where they needed to go, or had their lunch for school, or made sure that everybody got to their appointments.”
Both parents worked full-time jobs to support their growing family with the hopes of giving their kids a better life. Sullivan’s dad worked during the day as an accountant at State Street Bank, and then at night he did the books at a trucking company owned by Mike’s uncle.
Meanwhile, Myrna’s strong, confident voice helped her rise to a leadership position as the director of nursing at several nursing homes in the Boston area. Often, Mrs. Sullivan would enlist her children, including Mike, to help with various tasks around the nursing home, such as working as a nurse’s aides, helping in the kitchen or doing custodial work.
“We were able to see firsthand how my mother exercised her leadership,” Sullivan said. “I always remember the people that worked for her, they just adored her. They loved her. I think it had a lot to do with how she treated people.”
She was tough when the moment demanded it, but caring at all times. It was the same way at home.
“She was no-nonsense when it came to raising her kids,” Sullivan said. “We knew there were rules. If rules were broken, there were consequences. She made no bones about that.”
One night in high school, Mike had a couple buddies stay over, including his life-long friend Derik Malone. They went out to a high school party and came home to find Myrna waiting.
“Were you drinking?” Malone remembers her asking.
“No, Myrna. I would never drink,” he answered
“Come here. Let me smell your breath.”
“You were drinking. And it was vodka!”
“She was the type of woman that you can't get anything past her,” Malone said. “She won't put up with it. She's too smart to get fooled by it.”
Even teachers and coaches knew they had to be on alert if Mrs. Sullivan walked into the room. As Mike grew into a star of the Boston College High School hockey team and a college prospect, coaches from around the area started taking notice.
“I was sitting with them in their living room, I knew I had to be on my toes with Mrs. Sullivan,” Boston University coach Jack Parker said. “She was a mother hen, so to speak. She was worried what was going to happen with her boys and her daughters. She wasn’t someone who was passive. She was asking a lot of questions.”
But underneath that tough façade, the compassionate heart of a nurse always shone through. Perhaps there’s no better example of that than during Sullivan’s high school days. One of his good friends, Jim Meagher, lost his own biological mother when he was in middle school and his father was out of the picture.
By high school, Meagher’s rocky relationship with cousins devolved. This time it was Mike who had an idea. Why don’t you come stay with my family?
“They’re all for it,” Meagher remembers Mike saying. “They told me to ask you.”
They got to the Sullivan house in Marshfield and, well, it turned out Mike's parents didn’t know anything about their son’s invitation. But, when they asked Mrs. Sullivan on the spot, she agreed without hesitation.
Mrs. Sullivan embraced Meagher like he was another one of her children. And on his wedding night, Mrs. Sullivan stepped onto the dance floor to share the traditional mother-son dance.
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The way Sullivan sees it, good nurses and good parents share a lot of similar attributes. He recognizes that selflessness and compassion often in his wife, Kate.
“My wife does the same thing with my kids,” Sullivan said. “They’re not looking for accolades. That’s just what they do because that’s what moms do.”
Mike and Kate met back in high school. When the next chapter of Mike’s hockey life took him to Boston University, Kate studied nursing at Boston College. She would eventually work in a number of specialties, including oncology and pediatric medicine.
“Right away, she knew she wanted to be a nurse,” Sullivan said.
While Mike climbed the ladder to play 11 seasons for four different NHL franchises, Kate balanced a life in medicine with the responsibilities of raising three kids: Kaitlin, Matt and Kiley.
Recently, she stepped away from nursing when Mike took the coaching job in Pittsburgh. But still, her profession remains a part of her identity. She talked with Mike about volunteering to help administer vaccines. However, because of the NHL’s strict protocols and policies, she eventually decided it was best not to risk bringing the virus into their house and into the Penguins' dressing room.
“That’s just how she thinks,” Sullivan said. “She wants to help. I just think that’s the calling. Of my experiences being around the nurses and the doctors and the health care officials that I know, they all tend to share that same attribute.”
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When it came time to pick a college, Kate and Mike’s youngest daughter, Kiley, followed her father’s lead and chose Boston University, where she earned a degree in health science.
But by the end of her college experience, she began to feel the pull toward her mother and grandmother’s profession. Later this month, she’s scheduled to begin a program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she’ll earn her nursing license and become a registered nurse.
Before long, she’ll be the latest Sullivan to pick up the hammer and carry on the tradition.
“I’m proud of all of them for what they do,” Sullivan said. “[Health care workers] go to work every day and they make a lot of sacrifices to help people that are sick or that are not well. For me, there’s no more honorable profession than the health care industry.”
