LUKE LONGSTREET SULLIVAN:
An Inventory of His Papers at the Minnesota Historical Society
Manuscripts Collection
Part or all of this collection is restricted.
For
details, please see restrictions.
OVERVIEW
| Creator: | Sullivan, Luke Longstreet, 1954-, creator. | |
| Title: | Luke Longstreet Sullivan diaries and related papers. | |
| Dates: | 1954-1995. | |
| Abstract: | A family history compiled from correspondence and diaries (1954-1969); three bound, illustrated, typescript diaries (1970-1994); a notebook of advertising case studies (1989-1995); and two video recordings of draft and broadcast television commercials (1990), all documenting the childhood, advertising career, and chemical abuse problems of a Minneapolis copywriter. | |
| Quantity: | 1.0 cubic feet (1 box, including 5 v.), 2 master video files: MOV (1.1 GB), and 2 user video files: MP4 (47.8 MB). | |
| Location: | See Detailed Description section for shelf locations. |
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Luke Longstreet Sullivan was born on October 7, 1954 in Rochester, Minnesota, the fifth of six sons born to Charles Roger Sullivan, an orthopedist at the Mayo Clinic, and Myra Longstreet Sullivan, the only daughter of a Florida educator, ornithologist, and bibliophile. Sullivan's father died in a hotel on July 3, 1966 at the age of 44 while in Augusta, Georgia to interview for a faculty post at the Medical College of Georgia. The autopsy report assigned pneumonia as the cause of death; however, Sullivan attributed the primary cause to alcoholism, a disease to which Sullivan himself succumbed as a young adult and successfully learned to manage in his late thirties.
Prior to high school, Sullivan had used cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana. As a student at Mayo High School, Sullivan's cigarette and marijuana use became habitual. An active participant in extracurricular activities, Sullivan wrote feature articles and cartoons for the high school newspaper, played one of the leading roles in Tea House of the August Moon, and competed in freestyle and trampoline events as a member of the gymnastics team.
As a college student, Sullivan's drug use was not limited to marijuana, but was extended to include amphetamines, hallucinogens, cocaine, and tranquilizers. His freshman and sophomore years were spent on the campus of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, his junior year at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and his senior year was completed at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. He graduated from St. Olaf College in 1976 with a B.A. in psychology.
Sullivan married his college girlfriend in November of 1976. After several argumentative years, Sullivan and his wife began a long separation in 1981 and were divorced in February, 1988.
In January, 1977 Sullivan was offered a position through the Project for Pride in Living as editor of a newspaper for the Phillips neighborhood in Minneapolis, The Alley. In 1978 he began work as a typesetter for Dayton's Department Stores, took a second job as a keyliner for the Twin Cities Reader, and solicited freelance advertising work as well. These assignments led Sullivan to his first professional employment as a copywriter with the Minneapolis advertising firm of Bozell & Jacobs in 1979. In 1983 Sullivan moved to New York City and worked for Della Femina Travisano & Partners as a copywriter for one year before moving to Richmond, Virginia to write for The Martin Agency. In August, 1988 Sullivan was promoted to a vice presidency at The Martin Agency, but returned to live in Minneapolis in November, 1988 and was employed with Fallon McElligott in April, 1989. Throughout these agency moves, Sullivan maintained an active interest in freelance work, collaborating with friends in Richmond under the name "Drinking Buddies."
Sullivan has won numerous awards for his work in advertising competitions, most notably the One Show sponsored by the One Club for Art & Copy. He has lectured before students, presented at professional meetings, judged competitions, and published articles in trade journals.
Throughout part of his professional career, Sullivan continued to use tobacco, drugs, and alcohol. In 1982 Sullivan began to use cocaine and valium on a regular basis. At the time, he believed the drugs enhanced his work performance and that alcohol "took the edge off all the other drugs." By 1989 his dependency had increased to such a point that he spent over $16,000 for cocaine alone. In January, 1990 Sullivan entered a month-long, in-patient treatment program at St. Mary's Rehabilitation Center in Minneapolis and, with the exception of tobacco, has since remained free of chemical use.
Sullivan married again in March, 1991 and his first child was born in 1992.
SCOPE AND CONTENTS
The collection consists of a family history (1954-1969); a set of three bound, autographed, illustrated, typescript diaries (1970-1994); a notebook of advertising case studies (1989-1995); and two video recordings of draft and broadcast television commercials (1990).
The family history and diaries reveal Sullivan's childhood and adolescence in Rochester, Minnesota; the death of his father in 1966; his father's influence upon the family and other family dynamics; the daily life of a high school and college student in the drug culture of the 1970s; the progress of a career in advertising; the inner workings of advertising agencies; a twenty-year dependence upon alcohol and other chemical substances; and the rehabilitated daily life of a working professional, husband, and father.
The case studies and video recordings illustrate the process of creating print and television advertising campaigns.
ARRANGEMENT
ADMINISTRATIVE INFORMATION
Access Restrictions:
The video recordings in copyright in this collection are not available online, but can be accessed upon request for use in the Gale Family Library reading room. Please consult reference staff for more information.
Use Restrictions:
The donor retains copyright in the papers.
Preferred Citation:
[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Luke Longstreet Sullivan Diaries and Related Papers. Minnesota Historical Society.
See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.
Location of Master Files:
Digital masters of video recordings are maintained on the Society's secure digital collections servers and are managed and preserved in accordance with archival best practices.
The original video material was disposed after they were digitally reformatted into MOV files.
Accession Information:
Accession number: 15,249
Processing Information:
Digitization and encoding by April Rodriguez, August 2022.
Processed by: Monica Manny, July 1996.
Digital video transferred from the master videocassettes by the Minnesota Historical Society for preservation purposes (August 2022).
Digitization was made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.
Catalog ID number: 990017336330104294
DETAILED DESCRIPTION
FAMILY HISTORY:
| Box | |||||||||||||
| P2141 | 1 | Volume 1. All Survivors Accounted For: The Story of the Sullivan Family from 1954 to 1969 Told Through Letters and Diaries, 1954-1969. | |||||||||||
| The family history was compiled by Sullivan between 1990 and 1992 and is presented as a bound, illustrated, autographed, typescript volume. Information contained within the history was excerpted from a variety of original source materials and provides an intimate glimpse into the daily life of a mid-twentieth century, upper middle-class, white, American family with a history of alcoholism and chemical substance abuse. Primarily compiled from weekly correspondence between Sullivan's mother, Myra Longstreet Sullivan, and his maternal grandfather, Rupert J. Longstreet, the history also includes occasional correspondence written by Luke's father, Charles Roger Sullivan, to Luke's mother, grandfather, and brothers. Other sources include excerpts from diaries kept by family members, baby books kept by Myra Longstreet Sullivan, school writings, psychiatric evaluations, Charles' psychiatric case notes from The Institute for the Living, Charles' autopsy report, and Myra's poetry. | |||||||||||||
| The Family History begins in 1954, the year Luke Sullivan was born, and ends in 1969, the year Sullivan's maternal grandfather died and the year Sullivan began to keep his own daily diaries. The excerpts were compiled in chronological order with each year constituting one chapter. The history details the Sullivan family's child-rearing experiences and practices; the excitement of moving into and furnishing a new house; household expenses; the children's routine school progress, special events, and more unusual antics and adventures; Charles Roger Sullivan's professional advancement as an orthopedic surgeon on the staff of the Mayo Clinic; a marital separation in late 1964 and a mid-1965 reunion caused by financial difficulties; a renewed optimism during and immediately after Charles' psychiatric therapy at The Institute for the Living in Hartford, Connecticut; Charles' unexpected death in 1966 and Myra's life as a single parent raising six teenage boys with behavioral problems thereafter; the rock and roll bands of three of the Sullivan boys; and Rupert J. Longstreet's interests in Civil War history, astronomy, American space missions, ornithology, bookbinding, book collecting, and the Longstreet family genealogy. Retrospective comments and reminiscences collected from his mother and brothers were added by Sullivan when he compiled the history. A narrative at the end of the volume summarizes the accomplishments of each family member, outlining their schooling, careers, marriages, and children. | |||||||||||||
| Many color or black-and-white photocopies of photographs are included in the history with accompanying captions. These photographs depict family members, celebrations, vacations, and home exteriors and interiors. Illustrations also include floor and elevation plans for two of the houses in which the Sullivan family lived, as well as facsimile reproductions from the original correspondence, diaries, and school writings used to compile the history. Reproductions of the covers of Time and Life magazines and the album sleeves of musical recordings are included to illustrate national news and popular culture events of the period. Two family tree diagrams--one for the James Rubert Longstreet family, and one for the Michael Sullivan family--are also included. | |||||||||||||
DIARIES:
Sullivan transcribed the diaries during 1992-1995 from his handwritten, annual volumes covering the period 1970-1994. To these Sullivan added excerpts from other family papers and his own retrospective comments on selected events and family dynamics. The diaries are heavily illustrated, and, as in the Family History, facsimile illustrations of magazine covers and album sleeves were added to highlight national news and cultural events. Major personal, national, and media highlights are summarized at the closing of each yearly chapter. A preface, outlining the major themes and lifelong lessons peculiar to each volume, were added at the time of compilation. Additional diaries are expected to be added to this collection every two to five years in the future
| Box | |||||||||||||
| P2141 | 1 | Volume 1. Autobiography of a Knucklehead: The Diaries of Luke Sullivan from the Years 1970 to 1979. | |||||||||||
| Volume 1 begins when Sullivan was in ninth grade and recounts his life as a high school student, a college student, a newly married man, and an emerging professional. Included within the diary are excerpts from Sullivan's trampoline diaries, letters exchanged between his mother and brothers, to do/not to do lists, school papers, and professional newspaper and advertising copy. The decade covered by this volume includes many first experiences: his first regional gymnastics meet (1970), first use of hallucinogens (1971), first girlfriend (1971), first sexual intercourse (1972), first use of cocaine (1973), first summer job (1974), first apartment with his brother (1975), first and only shoplifting arrest (1975), first marriage (1976), first professional job (1977), first marital separation (1977), first substance abuse treatment (1977), first advertising work (1978), and first big account (1979). Entries provide great detail about Sullivan's social and psychological development as an adolescent. They describe how he coped with sibling and classmate rivalries; what popular book, movie, and music titles influenced Sullivan, beginning in college with Zen literature and the writings of Carlos Castaneda, Herman Hesse, and Aldous Huxley,and moving by the end of the decade into horror novels; the amount of money he spent on drugs and how he sometimes stole from friends while in college or itemized purchases as "editorial insight aids" against the newspaper for which he worked immediately after college; how his 1977 substance abuse treatment at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital stimulated his alcohol use; how he tried to hide his dependency from his wife and family; and how he alternated between a daily use of amphetamines and valium. | |||||||||||||
| Box | |||||||||||||
| P2141 | 1 | Volume 2. Euphoric Recall: the Diaries of Luke Sullivan from the Years 1980 to 1989. | |||||||||||
| In Sullivan's words, Volume 2, spanning the decade of the 1980s, recounts "the story of the last ten rungs down the ladder to the very bottom" (preface, [p. 4]). This is the story of Sullivan's young adulthood, the story of a highly intelligent, ambitious, imaginative, humorous, and competitive professional before he had learned to manage both his chemical dependency and his self-esteem. Entries detail the purchase of his first house (1980), arguments with his wife (1981), extra-marital relationships (1982-1987), stand-up comedy performances and routines (1982), the use of cocaine during work to boost his creativity (1982-1989), the decision to leave Minneapolis to work for a New York City advertising firm (1983), the ease of making drug connections in New York's Central Park (1983), the decision to leave New York for Richmond, Virginia (1984), attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to pacify a promise made to a brother (1984), a Caribbean vacation with his wife (1985), shipments of cocaine and valium from New York to his Richmond and Minneapolis offices (1986-1989), a trip to Paris awarded as first prize in the second annual Readers' Digest drunk driving poster competition (1986), the Parisian vacation with his wife (1987), meeting his future wife while sober (1987), divorce (1988), Antietam Battlefield tour (1988), the decision to leave Richmond and return to Minneapolis (1988), the ultimatum from his future wife to stop drinking or to live alone (1989), a second half-hearted attempt to attend AA meetings (1989), a feigned suicide attempt (1989), and the admission of a cocaine problem to his brothers and future wife (1989). Throughout this volume appear many self-admonishments and recriminations concerning both the extent and expense of his alcohol and drug consumption. There are repeated reminders about how much he spent for cocaine, how his behavior had caused embarrassing situations, and how he had to hide his dependency from family, friends, co-workers, superiors, and clients. However, Sullivan's dependency was a learned pattern, a method for coping with both the creative and competitive facets of his personality and a dependency he did not easily abandon. Interspersed between these entries are the recurring themes of the fear of a writer's block; frustrations with co-workers, agency directors, and client negotiations; an obsession with professional awards; and the setting of personal and financial goals toward which progress was neither measured nor attained. | |||||||||||||
| Box | |||||||||||||
| P2141 | 1 | Volume 3. It's All Coming Back to Me Now: The Diaries of Luke Sullivan from the Years 1990 to 1994. | |||||||||||
| Volume 3 covers the five-year span of 1990-1994, but its length is greater than the diaries from the two previous decades. The volume begins with Sullivan's last drink on January 2, 1990 and ends on December 30, 1994 with the conviction that the past five years of sobriety were the best of all his years. As Sullivan explained in the preface to this volume: "Looking back through my diaries, particularly the decade of the 1980s, there were many good days; days where great things happened. But even the greatest day from the '80s, even the best one, played itself out against a sad blue backdrop of self-centeredness, self-pity, grandiosity, paranoia and horror. No matter how high my hopes flew on those great days, they always came back to roost on a bar stool in a saloon somewhere, where I would be drunk, whining about the past and fearing the future. Such is the world of a drunk and a junkie. Now I am straight. And every single day in the pages that follow, even the bad ones, are all better than every day I was a drunk. Every single one." | |||||||||||||
| Entries in this volume include excerpts from Sullivan's annual diaries; letters written to his mother, brother, future wife, and deceased father while a patient at St. Mary's Rehabilitative Center; letters to his son; and his wife's diaries. Experiences detailed throughout this period include treatment and progress in St. Mary's rehabilitation program, AA meeting attendance following rehabilitative treatment, a sober return to work and an attendant fear of not being able to generate advertising ideas, biofeedback training as a substitute for learned and chemically-induced coping behaviors (1990), repeated efforts to stop smoking cigarettes (1990, 1992), engagement and second marriage (1990-1991), rediscovering the trampoline and a compound leg fracture (1991), physical therapy (1991-1992), attempts to conceive a child (1991-1992), marriage counseling (1992- ), fatherhood and adjusting to an infant in the house (1992- ), tours of the Gettysburg and Shiloh battlefields (1993), and purchasing and remodeling a house (1994). During the early part of this period, Sullivan's reading interests changed from horror novels to books on chemical dependency and rehabilitation. Themes from the 1980s are still evident in this volume; however, fears once managed through chemical stimulation became challenges managed without the use of alcohol or drugs. Entries relating these fears are more detailed here than in earlier volumes, giving not only the context of the dilemma but Sullivan's intended coping strategy as well. Of particular note is the text of a speech given before the Atlanta Portfolio Center and published in a 1994 issue of the magazine Creativity under the title "The Gospel According to Luke," which gives Sullivan's wit and wisdom about the advertising industry. | |||||||||||||
ADVERTISING:
| Box | |||||||||||||
| P2141 | 1 | Case Studies, 1989-1995. 1 volume. | |||||||||||
| The case studies illustrate the process by which Sullivan produced advertising campaigns for Fallon McElligott from conceptualization to their final print or television format. The studies include two campaigns developed for Old Grand Dad bourbon (1989-1991) and one developed for Ralston Purina (1990-1991). The Old Grand Dad campaigns included separate schemes for each of the domestic and international bourbon markets. Included within the case studies are agency directives, client marketing strategies, design sketches, rough layouts, story boards, and finished print campaigns. Retrospective comments about the creative process and negotiations with the clients were added by Sullivan in 1995. A profile describing Fallon McElligott, published in the September/October 1992 issue of Communication Arts, is included with the case studies. | |||||||||||||
| Internet | Video Recordings: | ||||||||||||
| In copyright. | |||||||||||||
| The collection includes two video recordings containing both the rough and final television commercials developed by Fallon McElligott for the Ralston Purina advertising campaign. The Rough Mix contains a 30-second spot used by the advertising firm to give the client a preliminary idea of what the final commercial would look and sound like. The Final Mix shows both the 30-second and 15-second spots as they were first broadcast during the National Football League's playoff games in January, 1991. | |||||||||||||
| Purina Puppy Chow. Rough mix, 1990. 1 master video file (1 minute, 6 seconds): MOV (240 MB) and 1 user video file: MP4 (9.3 MB). | |||||||||||||
| Ralston Purina "One's Just Right" tag. Final mix, December 18, 1990. 1 master video file (4 minutes, 12 seconds): MOV (916 MB) and 1 user video file: MP4 (38.5 MB). | |||||||||||||
CATALOG HEADINGS
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.
- Topics:
- Abused women -- Minnesota.
- Adult children of alcoholics -- Minnesota.
- Advertising.
- Advertising agencies -- Minnesota -- Minneapolis.
- Advertising agencies -- New York (N.Y.).
- Advertising agencies -- Virginia -- Richmond.
- Alcoholism -- Minnesota.
- Cocaine habit -- Minnesota.
- Drug abuse -- Minnesota.
- Problem families -- Minnesota.
- Rehabilitation.
- Substance abuse -- Treatment -- Minnesota.
- Tobacco habit -- Minnesota.
- Persons:
- Longstreet family.
- Longstreet, R. J. (Rupert J.).
- Sullivan, Charles Roger, 1921-1966.
- Sullivan family.
- Organizations:
- Della Femina Travisano & Partners.
- Fallon McElligott (Firm).
- Mayo Clinic.
- St. Mary's Rehabilitation Center (Minneapolis, Minn.).
- Types of Documents:
- Advertising campaigns.
- Diaries.
- Family histories.
- Television commercial films.
- Occupations:
- Alcoholics -- Minnesota.
- Copy writers -- Minnesota.
- Gymnasts -- Minnesota.
- Physicians -- Minnesota -- Rochester.
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