I first met Gerry Sullivan on Election Day. I was in Broad Channel. It’s a strange world out there. Broad Channel is on the edge of the city, surrounded by water. I had come to be near the water. I needed to get away. Gerry was standing guard in the polling station. He said, “I saw you come in.” He was happy to chat, but he took one look at the huge Canon in my hands and said, “I don’t want to be on camera. Not with my job.”
Our conversation started off light. Surface stuff you’d exchange with a stranger at a party. He was born and raised in Brooklyn. He lived in Breezy Point, a neighborhood on the Rockaway Peninsula in Jamaica Bay. Irish Catholic, one surviving brother, two kids, one ex-wife. More and more people came in to cast their votes and we progressed into the personal. Gerry, who is 57, was getting older so he couldn’t eat heavy meals anymore. Six months ago, his hair started to thin out so he stopped using shampoo. It’s growing back in. His daughter is dating a Mexican. Nice kid. I felt my eyes start to glaze over. Automatic nods, “uh huhs” and “oh wows” fired on endless rotation. But then Gerry told me how he used to lose days on the beach in “Breezy,” swimming in the shallows with his younger brother, Paddy.
He was like a different person when he spoke about the water. His face relaxed and the curve of his lips softened, as if they were feeling layers of sun from all those summers. The warmth spread to his pale blue eyes which trapped hints of light like sea glass. In 1969, Gerry’s parents bought a tiny house in Breezy Point. Every summer since has been spent there. On the last day of school, the family packed up the car and traded Bay Ridge for the beach. There was no AC and no TV. The Sullivans piled into that sweltering little house – Gerry, his two brothers, their parents, his grandmother and her twin sister, plus a few cousins for good measure. Ten people in 600 square feet, ready for the steamy summer ahead. Breezy was beds on the floor, beers on the beach and jumping off the jetty. His stories reminded me of my childhood in Australia.
There was warmth under each word, as if the melody of some song only he knew was always a note away. He spoke quickly. Tales tumbled out in a voice that was steady, nasal and earthy. When he laughed, his cheeks bunched up like two fleshy apples. A coating of orange freckles dusted each feature, silent relics to those annual Breezy pilgrimages on a fair, Irish Catholic canvas. They sat like marks on the calendar of his mooney face, stowing away the years. Now, Gerry hunched a little, which gave the impression that his solid, short body was always leaning forward, ready to catch your next word.
He was half way through telling me about his Little League baseball team when an older man shuffled into the polling center. The guy’s cap read Vietnam Veteran, golden embroidery jumping out from jet black. Gerry paused. His eyebrows arched again and that languid lift was gone. He was far away from Breezy Point now, back in the room with me, standing in the school cafeteria with its squeaky floors and styrofoam cups. He said, I don’t want my son to go to war. That’s why I voted for him.
I nodded politely. I didn’t know what else to do. He went on. You know, Tim Walz is gay? They had to artificially inseminate his wife because he wouldn’t have sex with her. And Kamala isn’t even Black, she’s Indian! I searched his eyes for irony and found none – just a sincere black on blue on white. I searched again. Nothing.
Gerry was animated now, taking on another, harsher persona. He’s going to bring peace to the world, you know? All this stuff about school shootings, it’s not because of the guns. It’s because they’re teaching kids sex education so early now it’s messing with their brains. They’re all becoming depressed homosexuals.
I’m listening to his monologue unfold but I’m not there, not really. I can see Gerry and the Vietnam Vet and the jar of “I Voted” stickers and the kid who’s standing on his parents shoes, two tiny feet pressed against two big ones, but there’s too much shock in my guts to reply. My brother happens to be one of those “homosexuals.” I’ve heard these views online, in videos, but I’ve never grated against them in the flesh.
I shouldn’t have been so shocked – Broad Channel’s election district 17 is one of the few Red election districts in New York City. 68.7% of people voted for Donald Trump in 2020, and 72.4% in 2024. Gerry works in the finance division of the Board of Elections which has to be bipartisan. A 50-50 split among employees. I knew which side he fell on but still, I wanted the other Gerry to come back. The one who was telling me about playing slap ball on the beach or swimming out to the sand bar or warm nights watching Grease at the clubhouse.
He was there, a few memories away, but I’d had enough. I started looking around the room, waiting for a break. I was just about to make for the bathroom when Gerry paused and let out a long, slow sigh. He looked up, meeting my eyes dead on. He said, After my brother died in 9/11 I just can’t take war. He was such a nice kid. Such a nice kid. I won’t have my son go to war.
I stayed and I listened. Such a nice kid. Those words rang through my ears for weeks. Paddy died when he was 32. Gerry was now old enough to be his dad. He looked back on that Tuesday in September 2001 not as a brother, but as a father. Such a nice kid.
When I left the polling center, Gerry offered to give me a ride to the station but I needed to walk. I boarded the A train in a daze, felt my body sink into its seat with a long sigh. I looked out the window at the water as long as I could, before it disappeared behind rows of houses and the city came rushing back in.
Over the next few days, our conversation registered only as a dream. But as weeks went by, it began to calcify. The rubbery feel of Gerry’s voice, athletic rows of straight white teeth, the neat chunk of spittle that flew out from his mouth, the shift in his eyes when he moved from Breezy to Broad Channel, like the dark flash of a storm. There was a quiet intensity that settled over him when he spoke of Paddy that I couldn’t stop thinking about. Gerry turned his name over in his mouth like a heavy stone. Paddy. Such a nice kid.
A few weeks later, I arranged to interview Gerry at a Pret a Manger on Broad Street, near his office. Clouds covered the sky, making the stone buildings of the Financial District look even more blanched. Gerry was early. He met me with a broad smile. After we ordered, we sat down and began talking about politics – it was November 21st and the election had been decided. His father, Paddy Senior, had died a few weeks before the election, so he didn’t get to see the outcome, but at least he got to early vote for Trump. Even though Gerry was happy, I could tell the conversation wasn’t exciting him. I’d seen him animated. Then he looked over at me and leaned forward, both hands on the table and eyes alight. We’re getting off track. You want to hear about the beach?
Gerry was miles away, back in his memories now, hunting through them for Paddy. He found him there, barefoot on the beach in Breezy, and again, eating a PB&J for dinner, and now, on the porch of their parents’ house where the boys would listen to their uncle play the accordion. He could sing like you wouldn’t believe. At night, Gerry and Paddy had one job – to carry that accordion around wherever their uncle went. Their uncle dropped in on porches and stoops, belting Irish songs to break up the heat of still evening air.
It was as if a tap had been turned on. It came through slowly at first, as a hum, but then the words remembered themselves and there was no going back. Gerry bobbed his head from side to side. A grin grew across his face, wider with each beat, and he sang.
Oh father dear, and I often hear you speak of Erin’s isle.
Her lofty scenes, her valleys green, her mountains rude and wild.
They say it is a lovely land wherein a prince might dwell.
Then, why did you abandon it? Oh the reason to me, tell.
But his smile dropped the moment he realized I didn’t know the tune. Skibbereen! It’s about a father telling his son how Ireland has changed. My uncle would sing it with my dad. What about the Clancy brothers? You don’t know the Clancy brothers! A boyish grin spread across his face. Make sure you’re writing this down.
After the song was done, Gerry stopped and looked down. The culture’s being lost. He had forgotten some of the songs his uncle used to sing. His own kids had no clue about them. The Brooklyn Gerry grew up in was full of immigrants, singing, dancing, cooking and shouting their culture in the streets. One of his friends lived around the corner from The Greek School of Plato in Dyker Heights. They had a marching band that practiced every day. It drove his friend’s dad crazy.
He could see his Irish roots waning, but Gerry didn’t want to force his children into things that didn’t interest them. His own father had been firm. When Gerry finished high school, he wanted to join the military but he had no choice – his dad, a New York City cop, wanted him to study finance. Gerry chuckled and looked off to the side. His father was a strong presence. Gerry trailed off again and turned his head away. Very forceful.
But Gerry had Paddy and Paddy got away with everything. Being the youngest, Paddy would flash their father a grin before leaving the house to go out drinking at a beach party when the boys were underaged. Gerry lowered his voice so much, I leaned forward to catch the words as they fell out. He supported me. He understood me. We shared a bedroom together our whole life. I had the ocean. Family and friends. The summers would go by so quickly.
Then Gerry caught himself. Blinked hard, twice, as if he was waking up in the morning, adjusting to the light. Catching the first sounds of the day. I don’t usually talk about this. But he’d started and now he couldn’t stop.
Breezy Point was the last place Gerry saw Paddy. It was the Sunday before the attacks. They spent the whole day together, drinking on the beach, like always. It was the same stretch of sand where they’d skimboarded, swam, fished and Frisbeed since boyhood. As kids, their mother would send them away to the beach with nothing but PB&Js and old bath towels. Gerry let out a laugh. The towels were big enough for our knees. The sand was clean and there was no sunscreen. I had blisters on my back like you couldn’t imagine.
Gerry doesn’t remember what they spoke about but it was probably the usual – girls, their family, work stuff. Until August 2001, the brothers were colleagues together at Cantor Fitzgerald. He paused and looked up to see if those two words meant anything to me. I’d never heard of it.
Gerry probably would have been killed on 9/11, along with Paddy, but he took a new job a month before. Six hundred fifty eight people from Cantor Fitzgerald died. Paddy. Their cousin, Peter. Everyone did. There had been a running joke around the office that someone was going to crash a plane into the towers – in 1993, the World Trade Center had been bombed and the finance guys and stockbrokers Gerry worked with liked to horse around.
But Gerry knew it wasn’t a joke the minute he heard the Towers had been hit during a work meeting. Back in Breezy Point, his mother and father sat on their front porch. They could see the World Trade Center from there; watched the Towers fall, saw the smoke billowing from the skyline. It wouldn’t stop for weeks. Burnt paper made it all the way into backyards. Gerry sucked in a short breath. It was dismal, man.
When he heard the news, Gerry was in shock. Paddy’s death broke his heart. He met my eyes and shook his head. I was distraught. I got a puppy to cope. I used to go and stand on the beach with the dog. It was the connection to everything.
After the attacks, Gerry stayed in Breezy at the old house. The community was hit hard by 9/11 – 29 people died in the attacks. There’s a memorial at the beach with a glass etching for each of them and a cross-shaped piece of steel from the World Trade Center.
Rockaway people are tight. Gerry stressed the last word. After the attacks, his family became best friends with the Burns’ who also lost their son, Matty. The community and the beach held each other together. His ex-wife helped him too. They married in 1997 but they didn’t have children until a few years after Paddy died. It was a difficult time to start a family. After the initial shock wore off, they began to try.
Now, Gerry says the biggest regret in his life is not having more children. When his son and daughter were little, they hated eggs. Wouldn’t touch them. So Gerry made them French toast every morning, dousing the sweet bread in the yolks to get the protein. Gerry’s ex-wife had a friend whose husband was addicted to opioids so there were a few summers where they took in their two little girls and made them part of their family. He used to bring the kids down to the same dock he and Paddy would go to, setting up fishing poles for anyone who wanted to join. Sometimes there would be 13 kids and seven poles. Gerry ran around, threading bait, adjusting lines, taking photos and casting rods. He let the kids reel it in, now matter what. No matter how big the fish on his line was. He was always exhausted after those days.
But as he tells me about his kids, Gerry is grinning again. It’s the same grin as when he sang the Irish song. An unthinking smile that asks the same question it answers – how could I not love them? Gerry still lives in Breezy Point. He had a PB&J for dinner the night before I met him. He can’t eat big meals nowadays. I wonder if he still likes the taste, all these years later, or if it just reminds him of Paddy and the beach.
