John Sully, former assistant Sonoma County sheriff, dies at 71

John Sully was a sunny-natured former Marine who followed his father into law enforcement and worked a dozen years for the San Francisco and Santa Rosa police departments before launching a long and varied career with the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office.

For years, he held the No. 2 position in the department and for a time two decades ago served as acting sheriff while former Sheriff Mark Ihde was on medical leave.

Sully died at his Sebastopol home Monday following a long siege of kidney cancer. He was 71.

“He battled it every way he could, and then some,” said former Sonoma County Supervisor Tim Smith, a friend of Sully for more than 40 years. “He was just an extraordinary guy, top of the line. They don’t get any finer.”

Sully was a native of San Francisco who met his future wife, Diana Sackrison, in the ninth grade at Herbert Hoover Junior High. He left high school to join the Marines in the early 1960, served a stint in the pre-Vietnam era, then came home and worked briefly at a San Francisco warehouse before becoming a San Francisco police officer.

His father, George Sully, worked 33 years for the SFPD, achieving the rank of deputy chief. The elder Sully retired to Sonoma County and died in 2001.

Through most of John Sully’s 10 years with the San Francisco department, he and his wife lived in the Fairfax and Woodacre areas of Marin County. It was there the Sullys met Tim Smith, who worked at the time at a Cala Foods store.

Diana Sully said her husband loved being a policeman but he was wired for cooperation rather than confrontation.

“He was really a community kind of police officer,” she said, adding the street anti-war and civil-rights street demonstrations of the 1960s and ’70s were hard for him.

“Sometimes he felt the same way the protesters did.”

John Sully left the SFPD in 1977 for a job as a patrolman in Santa Rosa. There he met and befriended a sergeant, Roger McDermott, who in 1978 was elected Sonoma County Sheriff.

McDermott named Sully his undersheriff. “I wanted someone I believed in and trusted,” McDermott said Tuesday. “He was perfect. I have nothing but praise for John.”

In 1984, Sully voluntarily stepped down as undersheriff to become the captain in charge of overseeing the county jail. Through much of his career he had either direct or indirect responsibility for operation of the jail and he played a large role in the county’s responses to a 1980 class-action lawsuit by inmates that resulted in the assignment of a federal monitor and the construction of a new jail.

“He really wanted to make it a good jail,” Diana Sully said. “He wanted to make a good place for people, not one that would make them worse.”

Sully retired as an assistant sheriff in 1998 to dedicate more time to the enjoyment of his family, golf, tennis, the Giants and 49ers and Warriors, hiking and other outdoors adventures, his dog, Maggie, and his Thursday morning breakfasts with buddies at Mac’s Deli & Cafe in downtown Santa Rosa.

He and wife treasured annual, winter trips to Hawaii’s Big Island. They made their last visit there this past January.

Sully was diagnosed with kidney cancer three years ago. After becoming aware it was terminal, he told family and friends he was determined to make it to the wedding last March of granddaughter Jessica McGough.

He was there. “The smile on his face walking down the aisle was the biggest one we ever saw,” Diana Sully said.

In addition to his wife in Sebastopol, Sully is survived by daughters Kira Bowman of Santa Rosa and Lisa Sully-McLaughlin of Albany, son Kevin Sully of Santa Rosa, brother George Sully of Concord and five grandchildren.

A celebration of his life will happen later this year.