James "Jimmy" O'Sullivan

The founder of the UB work in Jamaica passed away on October 6. In early June, he talked about his days growing up in the Caribbean and the circumstances that took him to Jamaica.

Steve Dennie

The story has been characterized this way: that James O'Sullivan was on his way to start mission work in the Bahamas, but got shipwrecked on Jamaica during a hurricane, so he started there instead. And the result was Jamaica Conference.

That makes a good story, but O'Sullivan says it didn't happen quite that way. However, as with most such stories, there are elements of truth. He was, indeed, on his way to the Bahamas. There was a hurricane and a shipwreck. And the result was Jamaica Conference.

James O'Sullivan passed away on October 6, 2001, at his home in Florida. He was 84. O'Sullivan was a pioneer, having started our work in Jamaica back in 1944. In 1992, at age 75, he became pastor of a Southern Methodist church in Florida, and that's how he spent the nine years prior to his death. He attended General Conference this past summer, and seemed as spry and sharp as ever, so his death was unexpected. Nevertheless, James O'Sullivan lived a good, long, and interesting life.

James O'Sullivan was born in the city of Georgetown on the Cayman Islands, the fifth of six children. His father, who was of Irish and Jewish descent, had been sent from Jamaica by the British (who then governed Jamaica) to establish a police force in the Caymans. He ended up marrying a local girl and settling down. James' mother grew up Presbyterian. When James' father became a Christian, they began attending the Church of God (the group associated with Anderson, Ind.).

James was a year-and-a-half old when his father died. His mother, wanting the children to receive a good education, moved the family to Jamaica, which had much better schools. She was already familiar with Jamaica; her father owned boats which traveled back and forth to Jamaica and the United States.

Around 1922, she tried to move the family to the States, but the trip didn't work out, so they headed back to Jamaica. It proved fortuitous. On the ship coming back, they met Rev. and Mrs. Paul D. Ford and their five children.

"We became friends," O'Sullivan recalls. "My mother invited them to have meetings in a downstairs hall in our home. So they started ministering there in Jamaica. People began to be saved, and the work spread." The Fords had to leave when Mrs. Ford became deathly sick with malaria, but the work continued. Eventually, James' mother bought the house the Fords had built in Constant Springs.

The Fords moved to York, Pa., and attended the Strinestown United Brethren church, then pastored by future bishop Ezra Funk. In 1933, Ford offered to the UB church the mission station in Constant Spring. The property belonged to Mrs. O'Sullivan, but he knew that if he recommended a group to her, she would gladly welcome the help. However, there wasn't sufficient interest. Yet.

At age three, Jimmy contracted lockjaw following a silly accident involving a makeshift "car" he built and was driving around the building. He was at the point of death. The doctor, seeing little hope, said to just put a spoon in his mouth and keep dropping water in to cool the fever. "About midnight, my mother and another lady were praying, and my mother said that if God spared my life, she would give me to his ministry. She asked me to confirm that, and I agreed. From then on, she considered that I would be a preacher."

After graduating from high school, James became a salesman for a company that sold soap and milk. He traveled throughout Jamaica. But Mrs. O'Sullivan knew that her 19-year-old boy was destined to become a minister. Wanting her preacher-to-be son to study for the ministry in the United States, she sent letters to various colleges, requesting catalogs and other information.

One such letter went to Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. One day Rev. Paul Ford was visiting the president of Messiah College, who was a friend. The president said, "By the way, I have a letter here from a lady in Jamaica who wants a school catalog." He handed the letter to Ford.

"Don't bother sending them a catalog," Ford said after reading the letter. "Instead, send a cable immediately saying you will accept him into the school and tell him he can come." With Ford vouching for this young man from Jamaica, the president agreed.

O'Sullivan recalled, "I was up in the hills visiting another preacher and helping in the services. I had received a letter from my mother saying she had been to the American consulate, and it appeared it would take me a year to get the papers and necessary information to go to the States. But the next day, I got a telegram from the president of Messiah College--'Come immediately.' This was strange. I hurried down."

Mrs. O'Sullivan took the cable to the American consul, who said that as soon as James got his passport and a physical exam, he could leave for the States.

"So, five days after I heard that I would need to wait a year, I was on a ship to the United States. Somebody--God--had intervened."

James spent three years at Messiah College, often spending time at the home of the Funks. After graduating from Messiah, he tagged along with the Funks on a trip to Huntington, Ind., and ended up enrolling at Huntington College. He graduated in 1942 with a Bachelor's degree, and along the way became a member of a United Brethren church.

James preached here and there, and worked at the local YMCA and at other places to pay the bills. Then he was invited to become pastor of the Union Church, a non-UB congregation just outside of Huntington.

"They said I just needed to come preach on Sunday, and didn't need to attend their business meetings or prayer meetings," James explained. "But I told them that if I was going to be the pastor, I was going to be the pastor all the way--I would do everything that needed to be done."

And in that role he remained for three years.

The UB mission board became seriously interested in starting mission work somewhere in the West Indies, and James had made known his interest in being part of it. Jamaica was a possibility. So was the Bahamas. Rev. Paul Ford had started a mission in the Bahamas and offered to turn it over to the mission board. Cuba, the Caymans, Puerto Rico, and other islands were considered. But in the end, the mission board opted to look first at the Bahamas.

In the fall of 1944, with World War II still raging, the mission board was ready to move. By that time, James had finished his Masters degree and was preparing to marry a United Brethren girl named Wilna who was completing her nursing degree at St. Joseph's Hospital in Fort Wayne, Ind.

James and Wilna were married on the same day that Wilna graduated. After their honeymoon, while Wilna tended to some nursing-related obligations, James headed to Florida.

James and Wilna O'Sullivan

The plan was for James to go to the Bahamas, where Dr. Clyde Meadows and Dr. George Fleming would join him. Together, they would evaluate the work on behalf of the mission board and decide if, indeed, they wanted to take control of it. On the way back, James would stop in Jamaica to visit his family.

But in Miami, complications arose. The British government of the Bahamas required a special clearance for persons going to the islands to do religious work. The Germans, so it was suspected, were sending in saboteurs disguised as ministers.

James called Dr. Fleming and told him he would be delayed a week or so in Miami. Dr. Fleming instructed him to proceed to Jamaica for his visit, and he and Dr. Meadows would meet him there. The three of them would then go to the Bahamas together.

James sent a telegram to his brother in Jamaica, and when he went to the office to receive the reply telegram, two FBI agents appeared on either side of him. "They wanted to know why I was sending messages across the water," James said. He explained his situation. They warned James against sending any more messages or telling anyone about his travel plans, because they believed German submarines lurked in the area.

So, without notifying his wife or the mission office, James went to Tampa and boarded the USS Kirkson, bound for the Cayman Islands and then Jamaica. The ship's communications equipment wasn't functioning, but nevertheless, they sailed from the harbor on October 10, 1944, in beautiful weather.

The trip to Jamaica was supposed to take four days. Instead, it took four weeks.

As the Kirkson rounded Cuba, a hurricane arose on the Caribbean. Around 10:00 in the morning, the captain told everyone, "By noon I should be in the Cayman Islands, but if this weather continues, I can be on the Cayman Islands instead of in the harbor." The island was just a flat piece of land close to sea level. So, the captain said, he had decided to reverse direction and sail for the Isle of Pines, an island just south of Cuba which Fidel Castro later made into a prison island.

They dropped three anchors in a harbor at the Isle of Pines, and the ship sat in calm water for a few hours. But then the hurricane struck them full force and tore off one anchor. When a second gale hit, the Kirkson's two remaining anchors were lost, and the ship was driven ashore into the mangroves.

It was about 2:30 in the morning. They were shipwrecked.

After the storm passed, a boat was lowered into the water and the captain traveled 30 miles to a small town, where he notified authorities of the ship's plight. He was taken to Havana, where he made arrangements for his ship, cargo, and passengers.

Finally, a boat came and took James and the other passengers to the Caymans, and then to Jamaica. A whole month had passed since he left Florida.

By this time, Dr. Fleming and Dr. Meadows had already gone to the Bahamas and returned to the States. When O'Sullivan reached Jamaica, he received a letter from Dr. Fleming saying that, after looking over the situation, they had decided against assuming ownership of the work in the Bahamas. But, Fleming added, "While you're in Jamaica, why don't you look around and see what you can do. I can't promise you any support, because you were sent to the Bahamas. But do what you can."

James mentioned this to his mother. "James," she said, "you know how to get out on the streets and talk to people and give them tracts. Pick a place and start doing that, and see what happens."

So he moved to Golden Spring and got to work. Wilna joined him there.

James bought land for a house, but couldn't find land for a church in the town. So he decided to hold services in a government community hall.

"The night before the opening service, a dance was held there," O'Sullivan recalled. "It had rained, and the floors were thick with mud. We had to clean it out before the service. But after all of that cleaning, the only person who showed up for the service was my wife."

It was a start.

"I continued to work in the outskirts, giving out tracts and having little meetings by the side of the road. My wife and I would walk 5-7 miles into the mountains, giving out tracts and talking to people. People would gather at some point and we would have a service. There wouldn't be electricity; the lights would usually be bottles of kerosene with a piece of cloth stuck down inside, and it would smoke and burn. I'd be leading the singing as they held this thing for me to see, and my face would be scorched. But those days were wonderful, and there was a lot going on. Things just blossomed from that little beginning at Golden Spring.

"Finally, while I was in the States, three men met with my mother and asked if they could get in touch with me. They said, 'We see him passing by us on his way to other villages. We want to give him our church and have him become our preacher.' So these three men offered what was the Mount Pleasant church. It wasn't a completed building, but a building where we could meet. So when I came back, I went there. The work started at Golden Spring, but Mount Pleasant was the first church."

By the time O'Sullivan retired from the UB work in 1964, a strong conference had arisen with capable leaders. Then, finally, he made it to the Bahamas. The hurricane may have sidetracked him for two decades, but he still reached his intended destination. For three years O'Sullivan worked alongside Rev. and Mrs. Paul Ford. During that third year, Rev. Ford died. Mrs. Ford remained, but the O'Sullivans moved back to the States.

In his latter years, Rev. O'Sullivan lived in Port Salerno, on Florida's east coast. Right up until his death on October 6, Jimmy O'Sullivan remained active and quick-witted, a man you couldn't help but enjoy being around. He will be missed, but he leaves behind a rich legacy: the churches of Jamaica Conference, which will continue reaching people with the Gospel for many decades to come.