October 3, 2007
Jackie Lawler, 61, and Tim Sullivan, 60, died last week. This, of course, is way, way too young.

As obituary writers put it, she died at home with friends and family at her side. He died suddenly, meaning he died while running, something he loved to do.

I don’t know if Jackie and Tim knew each other. I knew them both.

Tim’s first name was Maurice, but I didn’t know that until I saw it in his obituary. I’ve never heard anybody call him that.

He joined the Marines at age 17 and fought in Vietnam. I hadn’t known he joined at such a young age. The way most people knew Tim was because of his 27 years as a New York State trooper.

If you wanted to pull a stickup, the day of Tim’s wake at Nunn and McGrath on French Road in Utica was the day to do it. I was one of the few unarmed people at the wake. The parlor was filled with troopers and other law enforcement people who were there to pay respects.

Tim was just a short distance into his regular run with buddies when he collapsed. His running partners got to him in seconds but, as one of them said, he was already dead.

One of Tim’s sons, Matt, himself a trooper, said to me at the wake, “You’re the wordsmith. How do you put something like this into words.” I said to him, “Sometimes there are no words.”

Jackie had been sick for a couple of years. Cancer. You’d have never known it, though. She was one of those people who illuminated a room when she walked in. She was always the first to say hello, always happy and upbeat, always smiling. This was the case even when she was sick.

Jackie always seemed genuinely happy to see you.

Many people referred to her as Dick Lawler’s wife. He was the more famous of the two because of all his years at WKTV, but Jackie had a great career, too. She owned her own Allstate Insurance Agency. It was on Herkimer Road, not far from where she and Dick lived.

Just as there are no good words when young deaths like this happen, there is no good way to end a newspaper column about them.


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Joe Kelly is the editor and publisher of The Boonville Herald & Adirondack Tourist and THE GRIFF.