Announcer, teacher, sportswriter – Sullivan did it all

This really isn’t the way I wanted to start the first notebook column of the school year …

We lost the one and only Fred Sullivan last Thursday morning.

To most in the outlying towns of our coverage area, forgive me; it would be an insult not to honor one of the pillars of Fitchburg High athletics with just a few lines instead of long swaths of prose. You may not know who Fred was, but to anyone who has walked the revered halls of 98 Academy St. — especially sitting in room No. 408 — and has attended football games at Historic Crocker Field or watched basketball games in the fabled Brickyard, you most definitely knew Mr. Sullivan, just from his voice alone.

“Sully” was the Voice of the Red Raiders for over 30 years — “Second down and… two and a half yards to go…. Long two, short three” — and he certainly bled Fitchburg Red and Gray.

He was inducted into the FHS Hall of Fame as our contributor in 2009. He was a 1960 Fitchburg High grad, destined to be a Red Raider from birth as his father, Fred Sr., regaled him of tales of Clarence N. Amiott’s great teams from the 1920s and early 1930s. He was a darned good second baseman for the Fitchburg Nine back in the late 1950s, a Fitchburg State soccer goalkeeper in the early 1960s, and his FHS sports historical knowledge was absolutely unparalleled; he wrote the Hall of Fame bios for the first seven inductions before I took them over in 2015.

Read more here.