said, ‘If you will read all of these magazines
of Psychology Today, we will have a
psychology class for you in the fall.’ It was a
big stack like this,” Sullivan says, holding her
hand 2 feet above the desktop. “I read them
all, and they had a psychology class for me
and a few other students in the fall.”
This was an early indication of the words
that would become her motto: “There’s
a solution to every problem,” she says. “I
haven’t found one yet that I couldn’t solve in
some way, shape or form.”
Sullivan went to college an hour up the
road at William & Mary, where she majored
in psychology. “I didn’t want to stay close
to home,” she says. “I was ready for big
adventure. But, with four children, our family
economics [ruled that out].”
She worked all kinds of jobs, from waitress
to tour guide to babysitter, which would
provide serendipitous connections a few years
later. But it was a job at a halfway house,
working with emotionally disturbed children,
that turned her toward a career in law. “I
worked with this child all summer who had
been abused by her father,” Sullivan says. “She
wanted to learn how to swim, but she [always
wore] eight or nine shirts. I worked with her all
summer, got her so she would swim with one
T-shirt on. Then I had to give her back to her
dad. And I said, ‘I can’t do this.’”
She hated that feeling of helplessness;
she wanted the power to change rules that
were unfair.
SO SULLIVAN STAYED AT WILLIAM & MARY,
attending the Marshall-Wythe School of Law.
While there, she interned for the Hampton
Commonwealth’s Attorney Office and for
the ACLU. But her first summer, she had
difficulty lining anything up. She decided
to check with a solo practitioner for whom
she’d babysat. “He said, ‘Well, I don’t really
have enough work for a law clerk,’” Sullivan
recalls. “And I said, ‘Well, do you have any
work for a law clerk?’” Repeating this process
with two more lawyers from her babysitting
list, Sullivan created a job out of thin air. “I
just kept trying to patch a job together,” she
says. “It was a great experience. I went from
babysitter to law clerk that summer!”
Two of those solo practitioners, eventually
became judges. Frederick B. Lowe, now chief
judge in the 2nd Judicial Circuit of Virginia,
calls her a wonderful lawyer. “Ann’s best
characteristic is patience,” he says, “being
patient with what she’s trying to accomplish,
letting things come to her.”
And they did. Creative thinking not
only created a summer job for Sullivan, it
ushered her into her new career. As she was
preparing to graduate in 1978, she got a
letter from one of the partners at Crenshaw,
Ware & Martin requesting she interview with
them. Big surprise: She hadn’t even applied.
“We were friendly with a number of
people at William & Mary, and we would talk
with them about the students,” says Frank
Crenshaw. “They had some good comments
about Ann, said she was a bright person
and had a reputation of being a pretty good
worker. They were right about that.”
When Sullivan heard that the law school
dean had recommended her, she finally
understood what had happened. “[The
school] had hosted a speaker who was
looking for remuneration [that we didn’t
have],” Sullivan says. “She was in the House of
Delegates, so she controlled the pocketbooks
and we did not want to discourage her. So I
ran a bake sale and raised enough money to
pay her. And the dean thought, ‘This girl can
solve problems.’ So he told Mr. Crenshaw I
was a good person and I wound up here. All
because of a bake sale.”
Shortcake and brownies may have gotten
her through the door, but it was her even-
keeled tenacity that made her indispensible.
“She was always very pleasurable to work
with,” says Crenshaw. “And when I say ‘with,’
that’s ‘with’ and ‘against.’ She handled
contentious matters in a nice way so she
didn’t create a whole lot of extraneous
sparks. Always kept her eyes on what she
was trying to accomplish and the outcome
was always satisfactory.”
Determined, persistent, unflappable:
Those are the words that keep coming up
when people describe Sullivan. One time she
got sick during a hearing in North Carolina
and ruined her outfit. “I couldn’t go back into
the courtroom wearing what I was wearing,”
she says. “I was about the same size as my
paralegal [Suzi North-Sheehan], and she
gave me the clothes off her back, and she
went to Walmart in an overcoat to buy a new
outfit, and we finished the case. We bonded
that day for life.”
Another time, she experienced a severe
reaction to her contact lens solution and
developed hives on her cornea. Effectively,
she was blind in the courtroom. “Yeah, I
finished that case, too,” she says with a
laugh. “I don’t have the sense to know when
to quit.” She shrugs.
Even when Sullivan broke her dominant
right elbow, she kept coming to work. “It
didn’t make any difference,” says North-
Sheehan. “She was still going to get in there
and write with her left hand. And she did a
darn good job. The print was a little large,
but her dedication to the job is just stellar. …
It would’ve taken at least two broken arms
and a broken leg and a broken car to keep
her out of the office!”
“She’s also very intuitive,” Hogan adds.
“That really helps her relate to clients and
also deal with other attorneys. She’s very
observant. She’s very aware of what other
people want and where they’re coming
from and uses that to her advantage
when negotiating with other people or just
litigating in general.”
Sullivan credits her original career track
with honing her perceptiveness. “Psychology
is the greatest possible background you
can have for law,” she says, “because
understanding people is crucial to the
practice of law. I mostly use [psychology]
on my own clients to understand what their
barriers are and to get them to their goals.
… Sometimes all they really want is an
apology. You just have to find out what people
want, particularly in the employment world,
because it’s so personal, almost as personal
as divorce.”
Says North-Sheehan, “Ann is an emphatic
fighter for justice, for the little guy, for the
underdog. One of our cases involved a large
class action suit, and by winning that case
we changed the way that company did
business. So anyone now coming in to work
for that company is going to get fair pay and
fair benefits. So she works to change the
world. That’s part of the charm of her.”
Now Sullivan occupies the 12th floor
corner office in downtown Norfolk that once
belonged to Crenshaw, who is retired. The
view from her window looks down upon
the dome of the MacArthur Memorial and
the video screen at Nauticus. Law books
line the windowsill and shelves, but they
are overshadowed by family photos and
mementoes from old cases. There’s a
big golden die from a client who said he
would “cast the dice with you any time;” a
star-tipped wand from another client who
thought she was magic; and, bracketing the
room on opposite walls, two framed photos
taken approximately 30 years apart at the
same location—the Supreme Court steps.
In each photo, Sullivan stands shoulder-to-
shoulder with her winning legal teams. Her
smile, as always, is wide and full. It’s the
smile of someone brimming with confidence,
eager to face her next challenge.
