Tower Topics ~ Spring 2003

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Printery is all in the family for retiring Sullivan

Donald Sullivan sprinkles the conversation with printer’s lingo as he recalls the old days at Conception Abbey’s Printery House. He remembers working the old “10-by-15 windmill press,” mounting die and counter-die for gold leafing, running a “make ready” before a printing run, and working as a “printer’s devil.”

Donald Sullivan, purchasing manager, who retires from the Printery House after 40 years, comes from a long line of Abbey employees.

Sullivan, 61, who will retire in April after 40 years of service, was a seventh-grader when he took a most natural step for a Conception, Mo., Sullivan – he hired on at Conception Abbey. By that time, employment with the monks had become a family tradition.

“My dad was farm boss many years ago, when they worked with horses,” Sullivan said, “and of course all the monks remember my brother Cletus who worked for 35 years as the abbey carpenter. My brother Vince worked at the Printery House for 10 years, and my sister Marge, like every other girl in the community in those days, worked there in the summer. And I would be remiss not to mention my brother Bob who worked in the dairy barn and my deceased brother Jerry who worked in the garage in high school…The Sullivans have quite a tradition at Conception Abbey.”

Sullivan’s first job was a two-week stint collating and stapling Holy Week booklets. In contrast to today’s Printery House, which employs some 35 lay people, he was one of only three non-monastic workers. He remembers Father Philip Schuster bringing novices down from the monastery to chip in as they printed the abbey’s liturgical magazine, Altar and Home. There was no air conditioning and everything was stored on skids to prevent damage from the occasional flood that swamped the printery floor.

Paper today is delivered by trucks to the Printery House loading dock, but Sullivan remembers he and George Walter driving the abbey’s farm truck over to the Conception Jct. rail depot to unload paper from the Wabash.

“We had a lot of fun in those days,” he says. “There were more monks and we worked closer with them. Everything was more time-consuming, and there were times we’d spend a day and a half trying to fix something, but we enjoyed each other’s company.”

Just after Sullivan was hired, Father Daniel Schuster, the printery director, launched a line of Christmas cards. Early on, the monks sold about 100,000 cards a year. Today, the Printery House sells 5 million greeting cards and pieces of religious art a year.

For the first year Sullivan was a “printer’s devil,” which means he did “a little of everything,” but his main task was washing the presses. He later began setting type and operating the hand-fed printers throughout high school.

“Don and I hit it off immediately,” says Father Hugh Tasch, who was a proofreader and writer for Altar and Home when Sullivan came on board. “He was the youngest guy at the Printery House and I was a young monk. There was a lot of joshing and pleasantries, and we used to sit and chat about theology and the Bible.”

Father Hugh says printing was “incredibly primitive” in those days, and “Don did a little of everything.”

Sullivan served in the United States Air Force from 1961 until 1965, but with the end of his tour, he was back at the abbey, where he stepped up to a brand-new Heidelberg Gold Leaf Press. For the next 32 years he would apply the shiny gold leafing to greeting cards, until long hours standing on the concrete floor took its toll on a bad back. He has since worked as purchasing director, monitoring inventory and accounts payable.

Sullivan calls Conception Abbey the lifeblood of the Conception and Conception Jct. communities and points to the many generations of local families who have worked for the monks.

“There are Farnans and Aufferts, McCrarys and McQueens, and Holtmans, Schiebers and Schmitzs still working here,” he says. He says his own family’s connection goes back to the early Irish farmers who were instrumental in bringing the monks to Northwest Missouri.

Father Hugh says it’s wonderful to see Sullivan finally taking a rest.

“After all these years, he deserves it. He’s been very loyal and very dedicated. We’ll miss him.”

A 12-handicap golfer, Sullivan plans to spend much of his retirement roaming the manicured hills of nearby Mozingo Golf Course, but the abbey will always be walking distance from his house and equally close to his heart. He says he leaves a satisfied retiree. “There were probably a hundred times the monks could've fired me and a hundred times I could've quit and moved on to something else,” he says. “But if you like what you do and who you work with, you've got half the battle whipped.”

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