Sullivan is LLA Logger of Year By Tom Kelly When her mother and her mother's sister were 11 and 12 years old, they thought it was fun standing on a "springboard" inserted in a groove cut high up the stump of a cypress tree too big around to take down by sawing close to the ground, to help their father, Harm Daniel Sherman, pull a long crosscut saw to fell the tree. Today, Daniel Sherman's granddaughter, Veronica Sullivan, is CEO, director and safety manager for Delta Timber Cutting Company in Delhi, founded in 1979 in Transylvania, Louisiana with her husband, Jerrel Sullivan, Sr., president. Jerrel, Senior's father, Odell Sullivan, also a logger, was born in Winnfield in 1927. Today, Jerrel and Veronica, with their three sons, Jerrel, Jr., Neal, and Joseph, are operating from their headquarters in Delhi, Louisiana, with the fourth generation of the logging family, to harvest timber in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. Jerrel Sullivan, Sr., representing the family logging operation, was named Outstanding Logger of the Year by the Louisiana Loggers Association in Winnfield, at the annual LLA Self Insured Fund membership banquet held at the Winnfield Civic Center during the annual Louisiana Forest Festival. Jerrel Senior started logging with his father, operating a chain saw. Recalling some of his early experiences, he told of working on the Mississippi river, harvesting large "blue" logs loosened from the river-bottom muck by high waters after years buried in mud. Upon exposure to outside air, the logs emitted a gas which made a flame when lit with a match. When cut with a saw, the sawdust came out natural yellow wood color, but when exposed to air, turned blue again. The largest such log he ever recalls harvesting was a big cottonwood which contained 8,500 board feet of lumber. The largest tree he ever felled was a cypress, 14 feet in diameter at the butt, located in the Tensas Refuge on Indian Creek. He said he and his father sawed on it all day, and it refused to fall. They left it in the afternoon, expecting that a wind might knock it down. Sure enough, when they came back the next morning, it was laying on the ground. Most of their harvest these days is hardwood along the Mississippi River in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi. When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Delta Timber set up a location at Covington, in St. Tammany Parish across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, and remained involved in salvage operations for two and a half years. Both Jerrel and Veronica Sullivan hold Master Logger certification, and she manages the company's safety program, as well as bookkeeping. Son Joseph Sullivan started his own business in 2009, and also remains a part of Delta Timber. Son Neal D. Sullivan owns his own trucking company, and maintains a contract with Delta Timber. Son Jerrel, Jr., is a full-time employee of Delta Timber, running feller-buncher, skidder, loader, and delimber in the woods operations. Odell and Evenell Sullivan, Jerrel, Sr.'s parents, started their logging business in 1954 in Transylvania. The Delta Timber company brochure carries a slogan instilled by Jerrell's father Odell, who spoke in the plain language of the Piney Woods: "A job worth doin' is worth doin' right. I guarantee you for shore." |