Sullivan Family Lahaina Fire Recovery Fund

"We’ll Be OK; We’ll Make It.”

Our friend of 50 years and University of Oregon classmate (1976 graduate) Pat Sullivan grew up in Lahaina starting in 1962, when his parents moved their young family from Oregon to Hawaii. Pat likewise later raised his son Kevin and daughter Kelly in Lahaina and continued the business started by his late father Bob (a D-Day June 1944 paratrooper in France ).

On the afternoon and evening of August 8, Pat and his family managed to quickly and barely escape their homes, but they lost the three Lahaina homes which housed Pat and his wife Joyce, and Kevin and Kelly and their respective spouses and young children (ages 1, 2 and 3). They also lost all of their belongings except the clothes on their backs. All their homes were quickly reduced to ashes in the wildfire. One of those homes was the Wainee Street legacy family home, which had housed four generations of Sullivans in Lahaina.

The day after the fire Pat was able to return to the ashes of his Lahaina home, from which he and his wife had barely escaped the previous day. There happened to be a NBC News crew there that did an impromptu on-camera interview with Pat.

Pat’s interview that day was part of the lead piece on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt on August 9 .

Pat’s story of evacuation from the flames and overpowering smoke is chilling. He was one of the last people out of Lahaina - running north for several miles in the smoke and darkness on an empty highway carrying a heavy basket of hastily assembled important keepsakes and papers.

Despite that recent trauma, and the fact that he was seeing the ashes of his and his neighbors’ homes for the first time, Pat emotionally told the NBC News interviewer on August 9 that: “We’ll be OK; we’ll make it.”

Let’s help make that brave optimism a reality for Pat and Joyce and the children and grandchildren and assist in their recovery from this unimaginable loss. As with all Lahaina residents who lost their homes, the reality is that any eventual insurance proceeds will not adequately provide for the full cost of rebuilding, and insurance negotiations and claims processes and permitting and completion of any new construction will take years. In the meantime, the Sullivans will need to replace everything they owned – including the most basic necessities for the adults and children.