Hi all,
Today is Lou Sullivan’s birthday. He would have been 72.
Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting excerpts from interviews I conducted as research for the belated obituary I wrote on his life and legacy for the New York Times’ Overlooked series. My sources shared some really incredible and meaningful insights and stories, most of which didn’t make it into the article given limited space - and I wanted to give this content somewhere to live.
I should note that, although the NYT piece was published last week, I did most of my research and drafting in June and July of last year. So, these interviews were conducted in another context.
Today I’ll share excerpts from my interview with Lou’s older brother Flame Sullivan. Flame and Lou were close during Lou’s teen and early adult years in Milwaukee and throughout Lou’s adult life. I spoke with Flame by phone in June 2022.
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Megan Milks: How would you describe Lou as a person?
Flame Sullivan: Oh, he was dedicated, that's for sure. He had a goal in mind. He was always working on a project.
He used to take one vacation a year. He'd go to some conference where he would be talking to people who—doctors—they'd have degrees and whatnot, and it was just him, "Lou Sullivan." They usually put him at the end of the conference, so he could blow everybody away.
He knew what he was talking about. More than some of these doctors did.
I loved him dearly, I know that much.
We were pretty close growing up. When he first started getting out on the town, I was the one who drove him there. He was studious. He did his homework. He kept a lot of paperwork. He wrote a lot. He was always sort of tossed around from gay females to gay males because neither one of them really accepted him as far as their peer crowd. He was always the odd one out.
Pretty serious guy.
MM: I've heard he had kind of a wicked sense of humor. Would you agree with that?
FS: This is one thing that we used to do. We used to go and drive down to the east side from the west side [of Milwaukee]. And we'd wind up picking up hitchhikers. We'd get them in the car. They'd tell us where they're going and Lou and me would start a fight. We started yelling back and forth with each other. These people in the backseat would never say a word. We'd let off the person when they wanted to go and break into laughter after that.
It was wonderful. We had a regular skit. Our family was very dysfunctional—mother and father were constantly fighting. We had a repertoire of their screams that we would yell back and forth to each other. It was hilarious to us.
MM: [laughing] Seems therapeutic.
FS: Yeah, he had a strange sense of humor. Other than that, I don't know if he was that funny or not.
MM: You're one of the few people I've been able to talk to who knew him and knew him closely. So many of us who are aware of him know him only through his writing—through his diaries and, and the other things he's left behind. He's been subject of multiple books now, and his memory seems to be very much alive. What has that been like for you?
FS: When we were growing up, he was always identified as “Flame's brother” - it was constantly that way and it kind of irritated him. Like, underling or something. Now he's been dead I don't know - 40 or 50 years, I don't know - I don't have any time scale for how long he's been dead. But he's more famous than I am now. That's one thing about it.
He was always a pretty famous guy in my mind.
When he was trying to figure things out, he asked me. Once he was looking for pictures of females dressed as males, old-time pictures, and he couldn't find any. He came to me and said, “Jesus, Flame, I can't find any pictures of females dressed as males.” And I said, “Just a second.” I went into my stash of old photos and pulled out two photos. He couldn't fucking believe it. He had been looking for years and he should have came to me.
MM: That's a wonderful memory. You were a really important figure for him.
FS: I was the first one to read his books when he wrote them. He sent me the manuscripts and I talked to him, what I thought about sections, and then he'd send it to the editor.
Yeah, Lou and me were pretty close.
He had a lot of support from his family when he was alive. Nobody was judgmental or ashamed of him or any of the other things that some of these straight people do.
MM: What do you most hope Lou gets remembered for?
FS: For being outstanding in his field. For organizing, for seeing a path to the future. He had a way of wanting to better the world.
He came to Milwaukee once, and I was doing this theater piece called History of Sexuality. And in between set changes, they had an interview with some person, a different one every night. He came to town and I said how'd you like to do an interview? He said sure and he went into the theater and he interviewed in between set changes and everyone started to listen. Then they came to the end of the interview and Lou said my books will be on sale out in the lobby.
People realized that he was real. They thought he was just an actor. A gasp in the audience where there was almost a vacuum - it shocked them.
MM: A real trans person!
FS: Oh yeah, they couldn't believe he was real. But he is. He was.
MM: Is there anything else you’d like to add about Lou, his life, his work, or what he meant to you?
FS: His work was more important to him than death. When he was dying, he was like, I gotta get my stuff done. Gotta get my work done. He was driven to do it before he died.
He was a good friend to many people. I wish he was still here.
He was a lousy driver though. He stacked up my ’55 Ford into a bridge in Wyoming. It just had 35,000 miles on it, and he put it into a bridge abutment.