MIRIAM SULLIVAN Obituary

SULLIVAN MIRIAM (nee FENERTY) January 2, 2026, age 90. Miriam Sullivan, of Haddonfield, NJ, passed away peacefully at home after a brief illness. She was born on September 6, 1935 in Atlantic City, NJ, the daughter of Miriam Elizabeth Loughran and the Honorable Clare Gerald Fenerty, a Judge on the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, Irish-American orator, and former United States Congressman from Pennsylvania, who passed away when she was age 16. Miriam's beloved husband of 61 years, Henry "Burk" Sullivan-a retired English and Philosophy Professor-predeceased her. She will be remembered for her lifelong love of learning and language. Faith, family, friends, and compassionate care of the elderly were her priorities. Miriam received her early education at Mount Saint Joseph Academy, where she graduated first in her class in 1953 and was awarded three academic scholarships. Wanting to stay close to home to support her mother following her father's passing, she received scholarship offers from several local colleges, including Chestnut Hill College, from which she went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction in 1957, with a concentration in Romance Languages and a minor in English and Social Studies. During college, she participated in a summer study program in Guanajuato, Mexico and was a member of the Delta Epsilon Sigma National Honor Society. Upon Miriam's college graduation, the National Security Agency in Washington, D.C. selected her for employment as a crypto-communications trainee. She instead chose to work as a bilingual secretary and proofreader for Wyeth International, a pharmaceutical company in Radnor, Pennsylvania. She met her husband (a former Benedictine monk and then-Villanova graduate school student) at their shared parish church, Holy Child, in Philadelphia's Logan section. Miriam would leave professional employment to be a full-time homemaker for 25 years, raising her five children in a Haddonfield home saturated with literature, music, fun, and organic food. After her children completed college, she returned to formal study and, in 1990, earned a Scopist Diploma from the Court Reporting Institute of Philadelphia. She took loving care of her aging mother at home during the last fifteen years of her mother's life and later cared for two elderly single women friends at the end of their lives, while simultaneously pursuing further education and working. Miriam worked part-time both as a Production Assistant for the Philadelphia Bar Association-where she edited and proofread The Retainer and The Shingle-and, later, as a freelance proofreader and copy editor for court reporters, ORFA Corporation of America, Grey Advertising, and J.B. Saunders Company. She was an accomplished poet. Miriam loved Haddonfield and the Jersey Shore and spent her childhood summers in Ventnor, NJ. In their later years, her husband and she built a Ventnor family home on a lot that her father had purchased almost a century earlier, where they spent several happy summers with their children and grandchildren. She was a member of Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Haddonfield for 65 years. Miriam is survived by her devoted children: Miriam E. "Mimi" Sullivan (Andrew Hyde), Christine Sullivan Miller (Robert), Gerald Burk Sullivan (Abigail Brown Sullivan), Joseph Martin Sullivan (Dianna Wilson), John Gregory Sullivan (Mirela Draganescu); and by her cherished grandchildren: Sean, Andrew, and Matthew Sullivan, and Isabella Hyde. A private Mass of Christian Burial was held at Christ the King in Haddonfield on January 17, 2026. Interment was at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, in Cheltenham, PA. Funeral arrangements were through KAIN-MURPHY in Haddonfield, NJ, which is located directly next door to the family's former long-time home. www.KainMurphy.com