BC High Retirement

This article is from the Boston Globe- I used to eat Mrs. Sullivan's cakes my four years at BC High! The vanilla cake was my favorite.

November 5, 2005
Mary Sullivan, famous to generations of Boston College High School students for her scrumptious cake, bade a bittersweet adieu yesterday.

A spry 83, Sullivan baked about 1,000 pieces of sheet cake from scratch every week for 44 years until she handed the recipe to co-workers earlier this fall. While Sullivan scooped her final pasta at lunch yesterday, praise for her cake ran as thick as frosting.
''It's simply amazing," gushed Dan Breslin, a freshman from Marshfield who ate six squares of the cake, moist with a fine crumb and a distinct vanilla flavor. (Cake was free to commemorate Sullivan's retirement.)
Her departure ends something of a family dynasty. Her mother ran the cafeteria in 1961, the same year Sullivan started, and retired at 80. In turn, Sullivan hired sisters, cousins, and friends. The surviving ''Sunshine Girls" still meet for lunch monthly.
Although the cafeteria moved to a new building in March, Sullivan said the students never changed. ''They're all wonderful," she said.
They returned the favor.
As an entourage escorted Sullivan out the school's front door, students applauded from the second-floor catwalk. She waved a final time and left with three of her four daughters.
Sullivan plans to move from Quincy to senior housing in Milton. But first she's spending a week in Paris with her girlfriends.