Henry Vinton Sullivan was born on June 12, 1944, missing D-Day of WWII by a mere 6 days. He was born on a farm near Fay, Oklahoma and grew up mostly in Watonga, Oklahoma, with a three year time out in the desert farm community of Westmorland, California. Henry graduated from Watonga High School in 1962, attended Oklahoma University at Norman, Okla. and Southwestern College at Weatherford, Okla.
He served 4 years in the US Air Force, trained in electronics and radar maintenance, and was discharged in 1968. He married Bernadette Cecilia Polega on November 19, 1966 in a typical rural Michigan Polish family wedding. Christopher Charles was born on May 14, 1966 and Brian Orvin joined them on August 7, 1967. After leaving the Air Force, Henry moved his family to Southern California and went to work for Pacific Telephone Company, starting as a lineman climbing poles but soon moved into a more suitable career field involving electronic switching of telephone calls.
For 2 1/2 years, Henry spent many nights at the local community college learning management skills in the hope of advancing up the corporate ladder. He was promoted to management in 1974 and took an instructor’s job in one of the Bell System’s national training centers in Columbus, Ohio for 2 years before returning to San Diego. In 1981, he moved to the San Francisco area and served as a company-wide technical support person for all of California and Nevada in the new field of digital telephone switching. In 1985, he and Bernadette were divorced and soon after Henry took a job in another national training center in Lisle, Illinois (near Chicago), teaching digital switching hardware and software to telephone switching maintenance people from across the country.
In 1987, he returned to the San Francisco area long enough to take a new bride, Christy Allen and instantly acquired a new family. This new family had their own families, but Henry steadfastly refused to be called a grandfather until Christopher married Renee Rendon in February 1991 at Carson City, Nevada. Chris and Renee soon added to the family with Phillip (born August 12, 1991), and Alison (born September 21, 1994). Chris is a Litigation Specialist with AAA auto insurance in Fresno, Calif. Chris and Renee divorced in 2008. Brian is still thinking about a family, but mostly about his business in San Francisco. He is branching out with building very expensive custom furniture and business fixtures and such.
In 1991, Henry was offered an early retirement package from the phone company in California. He and Christy purchased a KOA Kampground in Oregon and really went to work. Along the way, they had the opportunity to buy Christy’s old employer, Oakbrook Interviewing Center in Illinois. In 1995, some fools with a lot of money took the campground off their hands and our heroes took off in a big bus of a motor home to see the country. Less than a year later, they bought a home and 11.5 acres on a hill in Auburn, California and started raising registeredminiature donkeys, thinking about planting a wine grape vineyard (never did) and playing with grandkids. They still had the Illinois company and went to Illinois frequently on business. They also ran off to anywhere else that Christy could think of. Examples are: Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, England, France, Alaska and Ireland. She failed to arouse sufficient interest in Henry to visit Antarctica.
In 2001, Christy passed away due to pancreatic cancer.
Henry found Sharyl Ledin (she actually found him) with the help of match.com and they were married June 15, 2002 in a beautiful ceremony in the back yard of the Auburn house. For a honeymoon, they joined forty some other brave souls for a 24 day train, bus and cruise ship tour of 12 countries: England, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Finland, Estonia, Sweden, and Denmark. They took several hundred pictures and over 5 hours of video (and edited that down to an hour and a half to avoid putting too many viewers to sleep). Sharyl has three grown children of her own: Joe Abinanti III, Stefanie, and Tracey. Joe and his wife Lori have Lori’s children, Joe and Megan. Young Joe is married to Megan (same name as his sister and his is the same as his step-father) and they have a daughter, Katy. In 2018, Stefanie moved with her family, which includes her husband Tim, his son Jake and our grand-daughter Katelyn, to Minden, Nevada. She works for a Douglas County disposal company. Tracey is married to Todd Guidt and they live in Williamsburg, Virginia. Tracey’s boys Zachary (b. 5 Mar 2003) and Andrew (b. 21 Jul 2006) live with them, along with Todd’s son Griffin.
In late 2004, not happy with how Oakbrook Interviewing Center was doing on its own, Henry and Sharyl made some major management changes and became much more involved in its activities. When that involvement still didn’t correct the company’s ills, they made a big decision: Sell the Auburn property and move to Illinois and get even more involved with the company. They discovered that not having 11.5 acres, a lot of irrigation equipment and all those animals to take care of created a lot more time to enjoy each other and their new roles.
On June 17, 2005, a date Henry calls Bloody Friday, most of the staff was let go and the company became a user of independent contractors rather than an employer of a lot of people. The company still tried to do the same functions and managed to stay in business for a while. Sharyl was very involved with the company’s accounting and the recruiting operation while Henry took care of a lot of the technical stuff that used to be farmed out (at great expense) tooutside expertise. They completed a major renovation, expansion and updating of the entire office space during this same time.
In 2007, Henry and Sharyl decided that even the previous drastic measures had not been enough to save the company and shut it down completely. They decided to move to New Mexico where there’s little humidity, not too much heat and it’s about halfway between the kids on each coast. They traveled a lot and have been to Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica, Hawaii, Portugal, Brazil, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Spain, France, Italy, Corsica, Gibraltar, Morocco, Canary Islands, Panama, Dominican Republic, Aruba, Mexico, England, the Azores and Bermuda and most of the Caribbean islands, Alaska and Canada. They didn’t spend much time in any of them except Costa Rica where they toured the country and enjoyed a “zip line” activity (see video). They’ve been on multiple cruises.
In October of 2009 our couple decided that they had had enough of New Mexico wind, sand storms and patio chairs bungeed together. They settled on San Angelo, Texas and moved there with the help of sons Chris, Brian and Brian’s truck. Sharyl enjoys keeping house, and is very good at sewing. She enthusiastically used her “sewing computer” that does embroidery and connects to her PC. She especially enjoyed making clothes for grand-daughter Katelyn. She boxed up all her sewing equipment and stored it in the shed, ready for Tracey to claim. Their animal kingdom is down to none. Their last dog, Gypsy, died in 2015. Henry keeps busy keeping up with technology, building things in the garage and keeping a much smaller yard weed-free. They later adopted a Chihuahua-mix dog named Honey.
In 2016, they decided that the middle of the country thing wasn’t working and looked for a home closer to the majority of their kids and their families. They looked the country over and settled on the Reno, Nevada area. It is close enough to California where 3 of the 5 kids live but not in that state. Henry said that he had left California nine times in his lifetime and that the last time was it. They bought a smaller house on a smaller lot in Carson City, Nevada and moved in. They both said that this was the last move they intended to make. So far, the move is working out well.
In 2024, Henry, now 4 years after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, agreed to one more move, into a Senior Living facility now known as Solista Carson in Carson City. Actually, they paid a very high rent (but not the HIGHEST) on a 2-bedroom unit for the month of June 2024. It is an organization that used to be known as Carson Plaza. They lived through a major renovation the summer of 2024. Between rides in buses and cabs (they sold their Subaru to Chris) to Dr. appointments and such.