Race car dedicated to Waterloo's Sullivan brothers featured at vets benefit races
Stock car with Sullivan brothers theme ran at races raising donations to hundreds of vets
ALGONA — A stock car dedicated to Waterloo’s five Sullivan brothers killed during World War II took the checkered flag in the hearts of many at a series of races benefitting veterans this past week.
And for Kelly Sullivan, granddaughter and grandniece of the five brothers, the feeling was mutual.
“There were so many veterans there,” she said. “My favorite part was talking to veterans. I got to really connect with veterans.
”It was very emotional,” said Sullivan, a Cedar Falls elementary school teacher, who was presented with an award honoring her grandfather and great uncles.
“That car’s probably touched a lot of people because of the Sullivans, and everybody knows the story,” said Jason Becker, co-founder of the nonprofit organization Hunting with Heroes of Lakota. He organized the “Salute to Veterans” race series, at tracks in Spencer, Algona and Boone.
The brothers were featured on one of several military-themed stock cars, in a benefit race series helping hundreds of veterans.
At the first night’s race, at Spencer, Becker said, as the each of the cars were introduced, a cheer went up as the Sullivans’ story was read.
Hunting with Heroes, a nonprofit veteran-support organization founded in 2011 by Jason Becker and his father Bernard, of Lakota, a town of about 270 near the Minnesota border in Kossuth County, engages in a number of activities benefitting veterans year round, including the race series.
Last year’s races served 800 veterans attending and raised $120,000 of in-kind benefits and gifts through sponsorships and donations. This wss the event’s seventh year. Jason Becker anticipated up to 1,000 veterans with various kinds of physical, emotional and material needs would be served.
Each car participating in the race is covered or “wrapped” with a design based on a military theme, such as the various branches of service. The sacrifice of veteran families was one of the themes for this year, Jason Becker explained, and the sacrifice of the Sullivan family was chosen to represent that theme.
Jason Becker said since 2011, he and his father had been hosting pheasant hunting events for disabled veterans, community meals for local veterans and Thanksgiving food distribution for hundreds of local veterans in and around Lakota and Kossuth County and beyond. They were approached by the Kossuth County speedway about doing a veteran-themed racing event.
“It was super successful,” Jason Becker said. “That ended up being the biggest event at that racetrack and we added a couple more tracks,” in Spencer and Boone. Sponsorships and donations grew, and so did the number of veterans served.
“Try to reach as many veterans as we can,” Becker said. “We reach between 700 and 1,000 veterans at the three tracks. A lot of these folks aren’t necessarily race fans. So if we wrap the cars with special themes, it gives people who are race fans or veterans something to be excited about.”
In addition to service branches, other cars’ themes included the U.S. Navy Blue Angels; Pearl Harbor and women working on the homefront during World War II, among others. One driver had a car based on his fighter squadron in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The cars were displayed in a fan zone for the public to see up close, with food, drink and music on hand.
“One of them this year was the Sullivan brothers; we called it ‘The American Sacrifice,’ “ Becker said, with the Sullivans’ story emblematic of that sacrifice. Kelly Sullivan was approached and agreed to allow her family to be featured.
The driver approached to have the Sullivans featured on his car was Donavon Smith of Lake City. Smith said he comes from a large family, and ironically, is one of five brothers who race. He said it’s a tribute from his family to the Sullivans.
“It’s just my family’s so big — I have six brothers and seven sisters — and we were thinking, ‘This (the Sullivans) is a pretty big family. We thought it’d be kind of neat, a family-to-family deal - ‘We Stick Together’ “ he said, echoing the motto of the brothers and the two U.S Navy ships named for them, one of which is still on active duty and which Kelly Sullivan sponsors.
The car features a likeness of the brothers’ ship, five gold stars for each of them, the famous likeness of the brothers standing around a ship hatch, and the brothers’ story on the trunk, as well as the USS The Sullivans emblem.
George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert Sullivan, the sons of Thomas and Alleta Sullivan of Waterloo, died when their ship, the USS Juneau, was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine on Nov. 13, 1942 while returning from the naval Battle of Guadalcanal. The Sullivans and all but 14 of the Juneau’s crew of nearly 700 perished. It was the greatest combat-related loss of life by one family at one time in U.S. military history.
“My father and I are from a really small patriotic community,” Jason Becker said, He was inspired to start the nonprofit, in part, by the number of military burials of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans he saw daily while doing a volunteer project with a landscaping contractor at Arlington National Cemetery — where, also, five memorial markers for the Sullivans are located. He suggested to his father doing some kind of service work for disabled veterans from those conflicts. His father suggested it be expanded to include those from earlier conflicts, including Vietnam.
Kelly Sullivan said she has been similarly inspired by the work of her great grandparents, Thomas and Alleta, participating in war bond rallies and other events in spite of their grief over the loss of their five sons.
“I always think about my great grandparents and how much they continued to do to support the war effort, to support patriotism. That’s what this organization (Hunting with Heroes) is doing,” Sullivan said. “They work so hard to continue to support our heroes. It’s a great way to give back.
“I honor what Hunting with Heroes is doing because it’s so important to honor our veterans, and the fact that the Sullivans can continue to help support the cause of honoring and supporting our veterans,” Sullivan said. That gives me joy to know that the Sullivan family, the loss that we had, which was a tragic loss, ends up bringing good things to people today, like this event.”
More information on Hunting with Heroes in Lakota can be found on the organization’s Facebook page, at this link.
Pat Kinney is a freelance writer and former longtime news staffer with the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier and, prior to that, several years at the Ames Tribune. He is currently an oral historian with the Grout Museum District in Waterloo. His “View from the Cedar Valley” column is part of “Iowa Writers Collaborative,” a collection of news and opinion writers from around the state who previously and currently work with a host of Iowa newspapers, news organizations and other publications. Click on their links below to sample their work.
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