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I came across this obituary while browsing the Globe's book section. I want others to know of this woman though I'd never heard of her until a few minutes ago. I think I will build her an altar next Day of the Dead. - Perdita
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Winona Yahn Sullivan, 61 (was ex-CIA analyst, writer) - by Martha Bartle, Boston Globe | June 27, 2004
Mystery writer Winona Yahn Sullivan wrote two pages a day as sure as she had dinner on the table at 6 every evening. As a stay-at-home mother with seven children, she never put her children in front of the television when she needed to write; instead, she encouraged them to paint, read, or take stabs at their own writing.
''Virginia Woolf once said to be a writer, one has to have a room of her own and be rich," she told the Globe in 1993. ''I had an old typewriter in the middle of the dining room and lots of kids, and I wrote with things crashing around."
Mrs. Sullivan, 61, a former CIA analyst, teacher, and writer of four mystery novels, including ''Sudden Death at the Norfolk Cafe," which won the Best First Private Eye Novel of 1991, died Thursday at the Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester. She suffered from a lung cancer uncommon in nonsmoking females, her husband, Edmund Sullivan of Gloucester, said.
Mrs. Sullivan was born in Olean, N.Y. In 1964, she graduated from Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., with a degree in political science.
While earning her master's degree in education from New York University, Mrs. Sullivan worked as a fashion model in Manhattan. For a period, she studied Russian at The University of Leningrad. She also taught high school Russian in Western New York for a brief time.
Looking for a way to use her knowledge of the Russian language, she wrote a letter to the CIA expressing interest in an espionage career.
In 1965, she joined the agency as an analyst of Russian intelligence, interpreting information from the field, and gaining experience she would use later in her mystery novels.
During the summer of 1966, she visited her then-boyfriend, who was working at a restaurant on Rocky Neck in Gloucester.
Edmund Sullivan offered to take her out while his friend waited tables one night.
''Because I was a painter, she thought me romantic and mysterious," Sullivan said, ''and when she left, her car was full of her paintings and I was impressed with those. She drove off and I told myself I'd see her again."
In 1967, the couple married and moved to Castleton, Vt., where they lived for three years in an abandoned church that also served as an art gallery, her husband said.
The couple and their burgeoning family moved to Cambridge in 1970. Mrs. Sullivan split her days between writing and rearing her children.
Every day at 6 p.m., Mrs. Sullivan rang a dinner bell that her children could hear even when riding their bikes down the street, and the family would sit down to a home-cooked meal.
''You could set the clock on it," her husband said. ''If you weren't there at 6, there had to be a very important reason."
Mrs. Sullivan entered a recipe contest every week, which she won often, and though she usually cooked fairly typical meals, she'd sometimes surprise you with a dish like chicken Kiev, said her daughter, Kathleen Dremann of Los Angeles.
''She was very involved and very proud of her family, and her writing career was something she was able to do while being a stay-at-home mom," her husband said. ''The character in her novels, Sister Cecile, a nun who solved mysteries, was kind of bumbling, but she prayed and things sort of fell into place. That was [Winona's] method of writing a story, this sort of complex plot which just fell together in the end."
In 1993, the Sullivans moved to Miami, where Mrs. Sullivan taught creative writing at the University of Miami.
''All her students loved her," her son Christian of Gloucester said. ''She had an elderly woman in class who said, 'If only I had you when I was young,' and another student who said her class was the reason he got up some mornings."
Mrs. Sullivan also taught English at Florida International University and City College, and Archbishop Carroll High School.
After being diagnosed with cancer in December 2001, the Sullivans moved back to Gloucester.
''Sometimes I tell people about her and they don't believe all the things she did," her daughter Kathleen said. ''Being a writer, working for the CIA, and then raising seven kids, but she took such good care of us. She was a wonderful mother."
In addition to her husband, son, and daughter, Mrs. Sullivan leaves three other sons, Joseph of San Jose, Calif., John of Winchester, and Edmund of Medford; two other daughters, Rachel of Brookline and Mary of Gloucester; her mother, Winona Yahn of Olean; a brother, Hugo Yahn of Olean; a sister, Patricia McAuley of Hinsdale, N.Y.; and four grandchildren.
A funeral Mass will be said tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. in Our Lady of Good Voyage Church in Gloucester.
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Winona Yahn Sullivan, 61 (was ex-CIA analyst, writer) - by Martha Bartle, Boston Globe | June 27, 2004
Mystery writer Winona Yahn Sullivan wrote two pages a day as sure as she had dinner on the table at 6 every evening. As a stay-at-home mother with seven children, she never put her children in front of the television when she needed to write; instead, she encouraged them to paint, read, or take stabs at their own writing.
''Virginia Woolf once said to be a writer, one has to have a room of her own and be rich," she told the Globe in 1993. ''I had an old typewriter in the middle of the dining room and lots of kids, and I wrote with things crashing around."
Mrs. Sullivan, 61, a former CIA analyst, teacher, and writer of four mystery novels, including ''Sudden Death at the Norfolk Cafe," which won the Best First Private Eye Novel of 1991, died Thursday at the Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester. She suffered from a lung cancer uncommon in nonsmoking females, her husband, Edmund Sullivan of Gloucester, said.
Mrs. Sullivan was born in Olean, N.Y. In 1964, she graduated from Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., with a degree in political science.
While earning her master's degree in education from New York University, Mrs. Sullivan worked as a fashion model in Manhattan. For a period, she studied Russian at The University of Leningrad. She also taught high school Russian in Western New York for a brief time.
Looking for a way to use her knowledge of the Russian language, she wrote a letter to the CIA expressing interest in an espionage career.
In 1965, she joined the agency as an analyst of Russian intelligence, interpreting information from the field, and gaining experience she would use later in her mystery novels.
During the summer of 1966, she visited her then-boyfriend, who was working at a restaurant on Rocky Neck in Gloucester.
Edmund Sullivan offered to take her out while his friend waited tables one night.
''Because I was a painter, she thought me romantic and mysterious," Sullivan said, ''and when she left, her car was full of her paintings and I was impressed with those. She drove off and I told myself I'd see her again."
In 1967, the couple married and moved to Castleton, Vt., where they lived for three years in an abandoned church that also served as an art gallery, her husband said.
The couple and their burgeoning family moved to Cambridge in 1970. Mrs. Sullivan split her days between writing and rearing her children.
Every day at 6 p.m., Mrs. Sullivan rang a dinner bell that her children could hear even when riding their bikes down the street, and the family would sit down to a home-cooked meal.
''You could set the clock on it," her husband said. ''If you weren't there at 6, there had to be a very important reason."
Mrs. Sullivan entered a recipe contest every week, which she won often, and though she usually cooked fairly typical meals, she'd sometimes surprise you with a dish like chicken Kiev, said her daughter, Kathleen Dremann of Los Angeles.
''She was very involved and very proud of her family, and her writing career was something she was able to do while being a stay-at-home mom," her husband said. ''The character in her novels, Sister Cecile, a nun who solved mysteries, was kind of bumbling, but she prayed and things sort of fell into place. That was [Winona's] method of writing a story, this sort of complex plot which just fell together in the end."
In 1993, the Sullivans moved to Miami, where Mrs. Sullivan taught creative writing at the University of Miami.
''All her students loved her," her son Christian of Gloucester said. ''She had an elderly woman in class who said, 'If only I had you when I was young,' and another student who said her class was the reason he got up some mornings."
Mrs. Sullivan also taught English at Florida International University and City College, and Archbishop Carroll High School.
After being diagnosed with cancer in December 2001, the Sullivans moved back to Gloucester.
''Sometimes I tell people about her and they don't believe all the things she did," her daughter Kathleen said. ''Being a writer, working for the CIA, and then raising seven kids, but she took such good care of us. She was a wonderful mother."
In addition to her husband, son, and daughter, Mrs. Sullivan leaves three other sons, Joseph of San Jose, Calif., John of Winchester, and Edmund of Medford; two other daughters, Rachel of Brookline and Mary of Gloucester; her mother, Winona Yahn of Olean; a brother, Hugo Yahn of Olean; a sister, Patricia McAuley of Hinsdale, N.Y.; and four grandchildren.
A funeral Mass will be said tomorrow at 9:30 a.m. in Our Lady of Good Voyage Church in Gloucester.
