Tom Hitcho, close friend and former co-worker of Gene Sullivan’s at Loyola University, regarded Sullivan as the epitome of living to serve others.
“Gene served almost all his life in Catholic education,” Hitcho said. “The Jesuits say this requires `a person for others.’ Gene epitomized this.”
Hitcho, senior associate athletic director at Loyola, served the school as athletic trainer when Sullivan coached the 1985 basketball team to the final 16 of the NCAA tournament before it lost to Patrick Ewing-led Georgetown.
Sullivan, who built up struggling basketball programs at DePaul and Loyola, died Thursday at 70.
Ray Meyer, the Hall of Fame former DePaul coach, didn’t always see eye to eye with Sullivan when Sullivan became DePaul’s athletic director in 1975.
But Meyer remembered Sullivan as “a close, loyal friend, a very good athletic director, a man who fought like hell for the underdog.
“Gene was good for DePaul and for Loyola and good for Chicago,” Meyer said. “He never stopped working. He stayed up nights thinking up ideas. He had great vision.
“He saw what he wanted and set his mind to it and went right after it.”
Tributes poured in Thursday from people whose lives Sullivan touched as a coach, as a Chicago Park District executive or as director of STAY, an organization of 5,000 Chicago-area coaches and 50,000 athletes pledged to oppose gangs, guns, drugs and hate crimes.
Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine, founder of “STAY,” called Sullivan “simply the best. The most enthusiastic, upbeat man it has been my privilege to know. Gene was a great coach, but more importantly, he was a great human being.”
Devine met first-year coach Sullivan as a 14-year-old Loyola Academy freshman in 1957, and played on the school’s 1961 Catholic League championship team.
Doug Bruno, coach of the women’s basketball team at DePaul and an associate of Sullivan’s at Loyola and DePaul, cited the way Sullivan inspired his colleagues for the rebuilding work at both schools.
“Sully injected a fresh breath of optimism,” Bruno said. “He provided a daily injection of enthusiasm.
“There were three reasons for our success at DePaul,” Bruno added. “One was the coaches, Ray and Joey Meyer. Next, players such as Dave Corzine, Joe Ponsetto, Curtis Watkins and Randy Ramsey. The other reason was simply Sully.”
