Louise Sullivan, age 92

Lucy Carroll:

You were raised in a traditional Southern home in Georgia, but you ended up moving to the city, marrying a CIA officer, and becoming a successful Realtor for decades in Chevy Chase DC while raising four kids. Let’s hear the details. We’ll start with your childhood.

Louise Sullivan:

I grew up in Georgia, and I claim two little towns as my hometown. One was Griffin, south of Atlanta, and one was Fort Valley, south of Macon. I was born in Griffin on Feb. 7th, 1932. I had a cheerful childhood. I was the oldest of three children. I had a younger brother Coleman (H. Coleman Nichols, 1934-2022] and a younger sister Jeannette. My parents, Henry Coleman Nichols [1907-1973] and Lois Kendrick Nichols [1911-1980], were kind of important among the towns’ families. I felt like a little princess growing up. I don’t know, we just played, and I attended school in Griffin. It was just a cheerful, playful childhood, and I enjoyed it very much.

So you had extended family in Griffin as well as Fort Valley?

Daddy and Aunt Jeanette, his sister, grew up in both towns. Their parents died when Daddy and his sister were just little children [Henry Bass Nichols, 1885-1911, and Louise Nichols-Guyon, 1887-1916], so they would spend time with both sets of grandparents – one set lived in Griffin and the other set in Fort Valley. My mother grew up in Griffin.

What role did they play in their community?

My father’s maternal grandfather, Alva Beaufort Greene [1859-1922], was an attorney – a judge – in Fort Valley. And my father’s paternal grandfather, Jonathan Prothro Nichols [1859-1942], owned the banks in Griffin. He also was one of the original owners of Coca-Cola stock, which did quite well.  My family lived off that inheritance, then later, my father was in insurance and eventually became a liquor commissioner for the state of West Virginia. [Mrs. Sullivan explained later that her immediate family lost the fortune because of a member’s gambling addiction].

Your childhood coincided with the Great Depression?

The major thing that happened in my childhood was the polio epidemic. We were just knocked down by polio. One of my little cousins got polio and was in horrible shape. My brother and I had been playing with him the day that he got sick. My brother and I got sore throats too, but ours didn’t develop into polio, thank goodness. As for the Great Depression – I was sort of unaware of the Great Depression in my young life. But of course it affected my family. It affected everybody.

Did the fear of polio change your family’s daily life the way the COVID-19 pandemic did ours?

We could play with our little friends who lived up and down the street, you know, but camps were closed during the summer and we couldn’t go swimming in the pools. That’s when I learned how to cook. We had a housekeeper named Tillie who did everything. She brought me into the kitchen and pulled up a little stool to the stove. I would stand on it and she would show me how to stir the box of whatever she was making. I learned to cook. She also got out my grandmother’s sewing machine, and I learned how to sew. I was the perfect home economics student.

Was it odd that she was teaching you those things instead of your mother?

Not my mother – I was my mother’s mother! [laughs good naturedly] My mother was a socialite. When they married, Mother was the town beauty and Daddy was the town catch! They just didn’t behave themselves [like parents]. And in those days, everybody had housekeepers. I remember [those years] fondly, I think, because I’ve always loved to cook and sew and that’s when I learned how to do that. I had two daughters, and boy did they have beautiful evening gowns! You know, I made them. Then I studied design after that, and learned how to put things together. I loved it.

What type of clothing did you most enjoy sewing?

Well, I made a coat one time that I wore in New York, and people would stop me on the street and ask me where I got it. And I was kind of flattered, but I didn’t tell them that I made it. I would say, Oh, I had it designed. But anyway, I just loved those things, so that time [in my youth] brought the opportunity to learn those new skills.

Anything else you’d like to share about your childhood?

Yes, it was unhappy in some ways because my parents married and divorced twice – the first time in 1945 when I was about 12 or 13. They were among the few couples in those days to get a divorce, and it was sad for me. But I had the most wonderful cousins and great aunts and uncles to support my siblings and me.

Because of my family situation we ended up moving to Bluefield, W.V., in my senior year of high school. It broke my heart to move but it became one of the happiest times in my life because I made best friends there – still, to this day I have two of those friends – June Goodlowe and Lura Clingenpeel. These women plus another friend, Sarah Stowers, adopted me. We just attracted attention all over the place! June was just so gorgeous, and people used to say she should be on television – and she was! She got a job on the Price is Right and whenever we’d go to the beach people would recognize her [laughs]. We used to get together every year in one place or another.

You mentioned earlier that your dad played basketball.

Daddy was a wonderful basketball player. They called his team in Fort Valley “The Nichols Five” because of all the Nichols boys in it. When the father of one of my cousins died years later, the headline in his obit was “The Last of the Nichols Five.”

Did he encourage you to pick up sports?

I was a basketball player, and my brother was a golfer. I was a golfer too. We also played bridge a lot. It was common in my generation, I think, to grow up playing bridge. We started when we were little and would have bridge parties as adults. 

In those days was it odd for girls to play basketball?

No, but we had different rules of how we played. And of course, the women’s game was a lot safer. You didn’t cross the middle line, half court. I loved basketball. It was always very nice.

Besides polio and the Great Depression, you also lived through World War II. Were you and your family affected by World War II in any way? Did you have family members who served?

Oh my father did, he was in World War II. It was, it was hard, yeah. Daddy and Mother, you know, were always Frick and Frack, but we had the most wonderful great aunts and uncles, and part of that little tribe is still alive. I had a joyful childhood.

Do you have specific memories of major wartime events, such as Pearl Harbor?

Well, of course, you know, everybody remembers that, but I don’t remember, you know, a lot of details about that.

Other than basketball, were there other clubs or social events that you enjoyed?

We played bridge a lot. Well, bridge parties with young women, and when I was older, we started playing with fellas. My husband and I played bridge for a long time with friends. I don’t know anyone who plays bridge anymore. We used to play it all the time, and Mother used to have bridge parties all the time. I just stood by the front door and watched all these beautiful women come in. I was a little girl. She would let me sit under the table while they played.

Do you remember thinking you wanted to be like her when you grew up?

My childhood [idol] was my Aunt Jeanette Wheaton. I wanted to be just like her! She volunteered to be an elementary school teacher during WWII. She was loving and we grew very close. [Mrs. Sullivan leaned forward clasping an inscribed watch-face dangling from a gold chain around her neck, saying she treasures it because it had once belonged to her aunt who wore it as a wrist-watch.] She gave this to me for my sixth birthday. It says, “To Jeannette from Grandpapa.” That was her grandfather, Jonathan Prothro Nichols.

I’m super glad that you are able to recall so much!

You know, it’s getting harder and harder. I will be 93 next week. It seems I don’t remember as much since I had [a minor stroke] in November. These memories had always been so sharp for me until then.

Happy birthday – that’s exciting! Let’s move on to the college timeframe.

I went to a junior college in Bluefield, WV, for two years, and then I went to a university, and only just spent one semester there – University of Florida in Gainesville. I thought I’d get a degree and then go to law school. I was talking to Daddy about it one time. He said, Oh darling, you don’t want to go to law school. He said, All you need to know how to do is play a good game of golf and be a good hand at bridge, and that’ll take you anywhere. And, of course, you already know how to do those things.

But that was his opinion. Well, I didn’t go to law school. It would have been very rare [for a woman to go to law school ] but I had one friend who was in the law school at the University of Florida. She was the only woman in the law school. I’m not sure why I wanted to go, but I did for a long time, and I don’t know where that came from.

Could it have maybe been related to your parents’ divorce?

I really, honestly don’t know but I just remember starting to want that. But, you know, I learned [skills] that were typical in my generation. I learned how to do shorthand and type because we could be secretaries. That was okay. One of my friends from the University of Florida and I came to Washington together, and she became a big gun at the CIA. And I went to work in a law firm. I became a legal secretary and worked in a law firm called Covington &  Burling, of which Dean Achison [former Secretary of State under Harry S. Truman and advisor to presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy] was a partner. I enjoyed it.

Tell me how you met your husband, Mark Jeremiah Sullivan Jr. I understand he was an analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency for nearly 40 years before he retired, and that he passed away in 2007.

When I first moved to Washington in 1953, I lived at 16th and Q streets Northwest and used to date a fellow who lived on 16th and R. Mark was his roommate. And so, we knew each other, and used to go around together all over town in a group. Then I ran into Mark some years later, on Wisconsin Avenue, and he had moved there, and I had moved to Macomb Street NW. He had just joined the CIA [in 1956], and he was invited to their summer party, but the gal he was dating was not going to be there. He asked if I would go with him, and I said sure. This was the Fourth of July in 1957. I went with him, and we were married in September 1957 at St. Albans [Episcopal Church]. It sounds quick, but we had known each other for a while. We just knew. I didn’t have a single reservation about marrying him. We were married three months shy of 50 years. Mark is buried at St. Albans, too.

Tell us how you ended up in the real estate business.

I got involved in real estate in 1974. The year 1973 was just a horrible year for us. I had a little boy, Mark, who was 11 or 12, and he was crossing the street properly between Western Ave and Military. A lady ran through a red light and just creamed him. He was in the hospital for seven weeks, and he almost died. We lived on 39th and Ingomar streets and when I brought him home, there was just a huge crowd around our house with balloons. Daddy came to see us when Mark got home and he [her father] died while he was there. He was 65. I just adored Daddy.

We also had twins Bobby and Ginny, who started first grade right after that, after Mark’s accident. They all were back in school. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was worn out, and I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t even get dressed. I had to have something to do. I thought about going to a psychiatrist, and then I saw an ad in the Northwest Current that Boss & Phelps – they were a real estate firm – was opening a new office in Georgetown. I thought, I think I’ll try real estate. Well, my husband had an absolute fit, you know, he didn’t want me to work. This was the way it was in those days. But I did. I became a Realtor.  

So you switched from secretarial work to selling houses?

Well, secretary was what I did before I was married in 1957. But in 1974,  I took the course and became a member of Boss & Phelps. I was a Realtor for many years – 44 years.

Were there many women in the company?

Very few in that company. Very few in town.

You must have felt proud.

Yes, I did. I enjoyed it, and I became very successful in it. [Later, when talking about that period she smiled broadly and said, “Poor Mark! He got used to it when I started making so much money!”]

What’s the key to being a successful real estate agent?

I would say how many sales you do. You work for a little while, and the people you know who want to sell their houses start to come to you because somebody has recommended you. I was the top Realtor in this area. I sold almost every house in this neighborhood on the west side of Connecticut Avenue, from a few years after I started in 1974 up until maybe 10 years before I retired. And there was a gal who did the east side, Nancy Taylor. We respected each other’s boundaries, and it was a fun dynamic. I got my start in Northwest DC and then I sold some residential places in Georgetown. As I got older I slowed down and mainly sold apartments in the Cathedral West building, where we moved after we sold the house on Ingomar.

What kept you working in real estate for so long?

I really enjoyed it. I had my own firm for a while. I was a partner in a firm called Evers and Pernick. It included Donna Evers, Joann Perick, and me. When I left it turned into Evers and Company. 

You must have sold houses to some prominent people in this neighborhood?

Oh yes, many. Chevy Chase attracted people who held important positions in government and journalism, among other fields. There was William V. Shannon [New York Times editorial writer and Carter-appointed diplomat]. He was an ambassador to Ireland, and he was one of my neighbors who lived on Gramercy Street. I started getting referrals from one of the big law firms in town – Wilmer Cutler & Pickering – and they would recommend me. I had a very good real estate career.

Was there White Flight going on in those decades, from the 1970s to the 1990s?

Well, when we first moved to this area from our house in American University Park in 1970, people were moving out of DC [after the riots amid racial strife] but we wanted to stay.  All my children were born in DC. Mark in 1961. Catherine –  “Cass” – two years later in 1963. Then we had twins Ginny [Virginia] and Bobby [Robert] in 1967. We didn’t know the twins were two babies. I was big during pregnancy, but the doctor only ever heard one heartbeat. I remember the sound of the doctor’s voice when Ginny was born, saying she weighed only four pounds. I thought oh my lord. He turned to his assistant and said, Oh my god, there’s another baby! Bobby was born at three pounds.

How did you balance a life with four kids and make time for yourself?

I don’t know. I think I must have been a genius [laughs]. I just did. We had normal children, a little mischievous now and then, but not over the top. When they were young we lived in a little house on 45th Street in AU Park – so small we practically had to sleep outside! We outgrew it overnight when the twins were born. And my mother came to be with us too.

We bought the house at 3900 Ingomar around 1970 after we came back from living in London for two years [1967-1969] where my husband was posted at the embassy there for the CIA [he worked in concert with U.S. arms-control negotiators]. When we returned we had to move back into the house on 45th because the market was not moving. But [eventually], we saw the house at 3900 Ingomar Street and loved it. My God, it was a seven-bedroom house, only $50,000 and we bought it. It just recently sold for just under $3 million.

How did your kids like living in London?

Mark and Catherine went to school there. They were ages 6 and 4 years old when we moved there. They had cute school uniforms. Our twins, Bobby and Ginny, were only four months old when we crossed the Atlantic. 

Were the older kids picky about the English food?

Yes, a little bit. But we adjusted, I loved living in London. I would take the twins to Kensington Park every day in their big twin pram. The nanny for Princess Margaret (Queen Elizabeth II’s sister) just loved my twins. We’d bump prams with the little royal baby!

So you returned to Washington and moved to Chevy Chase DC. Tell us about your family life and the neighborhood there.

It was a very nice neighborhood. We were surrounded by lovely people. And interesting people. We discovered, after we bought that house, that across the street lived [Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and New York Times columnist] Russell Baker. Bill Shannon lived down the street. Frank Rich lived down the street. Frank Rich owned shops downtown, but his son, Frank Rich, was a famous journalist [New York Times liberal essayist and later HBO documentarian].

There were people up 39th Street on Harrison, Garrison, and Gramercy streets who all knew each other. We had the occasional block party. I mentioned Russell Baker who lived across the street from us, and Bob Semple [Robert B. Semple Jr.], who headed the New York Times Washington office, lived down the street. Bill Shannon had kids our children’s ages. A lot of partners in law firms, people who worked for Arnold & Porter [law firm].

When I think of all that we had in the Ingomar house! We were lucky. Our children grew up in this neighborhood and went to Murch [Elementary], Deal [Junior High, later Middle School] and Wilson [High School, now Jackson-Reed]. I was one of the Murch moms in the dance group. We used to stand up and kick our feet on the stage. It was fun! And our house was featured in [the March 1979] Better Homes and Gardens magazine when we redid our kitchen. We used to go down to the Parthenon – it used to be called the Piccadilly in those days. We loved it because it served English food.

You know, all my children were musical. They had beautiful voices. Their grandmother, Elaine Nelson Hauck, my husband’s mother, studied for the opera. She had a gorgeous voice, and the children inherited her ability to use their voices. My little Bobby was – and still is – a rock star. He’s the singer for Soulside, a band he started at Wilson. He’s 58 now and he’ll be going off to Japan with his band soon. Soulside would go off to Eastern Europe when the Iron Curtain was still up. That made me nervous, but Mark would make sure someone from the CIA would look after him.

Did you feel strongly about keeping your kids in public schools?

I didn’t, but my husband did. These were odd days of [racial strife] in DC schools. My husband insisted they go to public school. [A diverse student body] was something my husband certainly wanted our kids to be a part of. He was from New York state. Unfortunately, the reason why a lot of families were moving to the suburbs [at that time] was because they didn’t want their kids to go to school with Black kids. But our kids did just fine and made such lovely friends.

Did your kids feel like it was holding them back to be at a public school? What did you think of the curriculum they were being taught?

No, they didn’t. As for the curriculum, they were taught very well. All my children got to choose where they wanted to go to college, and they all went to very good schools. I was proud of them. Mark went to Colgate University [in Hamilton, NY]. Catherine went to Hollins [University] in Roanoke, VA; Bobby went to Boston University; and Ginny went to Tulane University.

When did you sell your family home at 3900 Ingomar?

We lived there for 25 years. That would have been around 1995 – I don’t remember exactly. And then we moved to Cathedral Avenue NW. We had a lovely apartment in the Cathedral West Condominiums, the building right next door to The Westchester. At first we thought we hated that building – our pediatrician’s office had been in that building. We had picked out something in The Westchester that we were going to buy. And I said, Well, Mark, there’s an apartment open at Cathedral West, the building we don’t like very much. We went to see it and we thought, oh my lord, and we bought it! We loved living there. It was a beautiful apartment with a gorgeous view of Glover-Archbold Park.

Your kids had gone off to college by then? What careers did they pursue?

Yes, they were all finished with college by then. Bobby has lived in Asheville, NC, for years and runs an organic foods store. My son, Mark, is a therapist. Cass runs a senior living facility in California, and Ginny does marketing and advertisement for a sports department at the University of California in Berkeley. 

When did you move back to Chevy Chase and into the Chevy Chase House?

I moved here four years ago and it feels like yesterday. I love this neighborhood, I used to walk by Chevy Chase House all the time. After my husband Mark died of lung cancer, I remained in our Cathedral West apartment. I had slowed down in real estate after moving there, and I mostly sold other apartments in our building. I was working with an old friend in the WC and AN Miller company, but we were bought out by Long & Foster.

Our Cathedral West apartment had huge rooms, which were different from this space at Chevy Chase House, but I was ready to leave. I had to give up my car because my eyesight was declining. I had been looking at senior living homes, but this one kept coming back. I loved the location because there are so many things to walk to. It’s an interesting feeling to get rid of all your things. I had a baby grand piano and many antiques. But I don’t miss those things.

What’s something you enjoy about living here?

I eat with a nice group of people. The agent here invites me to have lunch with people interested in living at Chevy Chase house. It’s kind of fun to be back in real estate!

And of course I know people here. My good friend Tish Gardner lives here – we both decided we would move here. Her daughter is my daughter in law – my Mark and her Ellen – they were sweethearts when they were 12. When Mark was in the hospital, she used to bring him cookies.

In wrapping up, is there any advice about life you want to give us?

Stick with it. If you think about it, we had four children and that was a lot of children in a way. We had a busy life with busy careers, but honestly, we stuck with it and made a good life for ourselves. Positivity is a good way to approach life. I’ve had a long, good life and I’ve met a lot of interesting people.I feel like I’ve been lucky too. I’m satisfied.

END

 © Copyright Historic Chevy Chase DC
Oral history interviews may be copied for personal, research and/or educational purposes only under the fair use provisions of US Copyright Law. Oral histories accessed through this web site are the property of Historic Chevy Chase DC. the copyright owner.

Use of these interviews is subject to the following terms and conditions:

• Material may not be used for commercial purposes. Short quotes and references are permitted for instructional and publication purposes.
• Users must provide complete citation referencing the speaker, the interviewer, the date and website with URL address.
• Users may not re-post or link the oral history site or any parts of it to another program or listing without permission.

Questions about the use of these oral history materials and requests for permission should be directed to hccdc@comcast.net or HCCDC, PO Box 6292, Washington, D.C. 20015-0292.