America has a long and hallowed tradition of honoring its millions of men and women who have served their country throughout generations of armed conflict. That tradition honors both those who returned from war and those who did not. Memorials have been erected to honor the fallen or lost fighting overseas in Germany, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

It is harder to memorialize the casualties of the Cold War because it was not an actual “war” in the traditional sense of the word. The Cold War did not involve an armed conflict between America and a specific combatant, but its victims are just as heroic and their sacrifices should not be forgotten.

Although neither men were soldiers, twenty-nine-year-old Geoffrey Sullivan and thirty-seven-year-old Alex Rorke served their country and are two such casualties of the Cold War.

 

Alex Rorke (Sitting) and Geoffrey Sullivan (Standing)

In 1959, Air Force pilot Geoffrey Sullivan received an honorable discharge and became a freelance commercial pilot. Although no longer in military service, he still sought a way to serve his country.

The timing was perhaps fortuitous as, in the same year, the Communist threat was hitting perilously close to home. The Cuban Revolution resulted in a government hostile to America. A communist regime in the small island nation only ninety miles from the American mainland was a major concern to United States officials of both major political parties. Once Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, the United States government and several Cuban exile groups launched campaigns to overthrow him.

Suspected CIA operative Alex Rorke organized and recruited others to carry out such missions. In 1961, Rorke hired Sullivan as a pilot for a variety of covert missions against the now-communist country. They ranged from distributing anti-Castro leaflets to dropping homemade bombs.

That same year, the American-backed Cuban exiles epically failed in their attempt to invade the Bay of Pigs and overthrow Castro. A year-and-a-half later, in October 1962, Soviet missiles were discovered in Cuba, precipitating the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

Sullivan and Rorke;

 

A Clandestine Pair

After the missile scare subsided, the United States continued covert missions on Cuba, albeit more discreetly. Many of the more clandestine operations, such as those of Rorke and Sullivan, were abandoned.

The government went so far as issuing a public warning to six individuals to cease their operations against Cuba. Sullivan and Rorke were among those named. Despite the warning, the duo are believed to have attempted another covert mission.

On September 23, 1963, eight days after the warnings were issued, Geoffrey Sullivan flew his plane out of Waterbury, Connecticut. He said he would be home, for good, in five days, promising his wife, Cora, this would be his last espionage escapade.

Public Government Warning

On the following day, September 24, Sullivan and Rorke met Frank Sturgis in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Sturgis, who nine years later gained infamy as one of the Watergate burglars in the scandal that led to President Nixon’s resignation, had also been named in the public warning. At the time, he was an undercover operative who was trying to convince Nicaraguan General Anastasio Somoza to permit a United States base of operations in the Central American country for studying bombing missions inside Cuba.

Sturgis recruited Rorke to meet with Nicaraguan officials, and Rorke recruited Sullivan to fly him there. Sullivan rented an airplane on which he and Rorke planned to leave for Nicaragua the following day, September 25. Sturgis stayed behind.

Frank Sturgis

That morning, Rorke’s wife, Jackie, drove him to Miami’s Opa-Locka Airport. Along the way, they picked up another man whom Jackie did not know and whom her husband did not introduce.Jackie said the unknown man appeared to be Hispanic and spoke in broken English. She drove them to the airport, where Sullivan was waiting.

A two-engine plane took off from Miami carrying Sullivan, Rorke, and the third man.

The Duo Depart

Sullivan’s flight activities over the following two days are confusing. He returned to the Miami airport three times with no explanation.

On the third trip, the plane’s landing gear, inexplicably, remained up. Sullivan flew over the airport after the control panel ordered him not to land. Five hours later, he landed at the North Perry Airport, thirty miles north of Miami. The time between the two airports was no more than a twenty-minute flight. Where the plane was for those four-and-half-plus hours is unknown.

Sullivan refueled the plane at North Perry Airport. The attendant was puzzled as the plane’s tank was virtually full, but Sullivan again offered no explanation. He took off again around 1:30 p.m. on September 26 with the flight plan chartered for an odd locale: Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

Odd Aerial Actions

Two hours later, however, Sullivan radioed Miami International Airport with a new flight plan. The air traffic controller responded that this flight plan was two hours beyond the normal range of his aircraft. Sullivan then altered his destination to Tucuman, Panama, but this locale was also well beyond his aircraft’s range.

Seven hours passed with no contact from the plane until 10:22 p.m., when Sullivan again radioed the Miami tower. This time, he filed a flight plan for Belize, then part of British Honduras.

The FAA says Sullivan stopped for fuel again in Cozumel, Mexico. The refueling shortly after midnight on September 27 was the last sighting of the plane.

More Odd Flight Plans

Geoffrey Sullivan, Alex Rorke, and the unknown third man were assumed lost at sea. A large-scale search failed to yield any trace of the men or the plane.

No Trace of Sullivan and Rorke

Sherry Sullivan, seven-years-old when her father disappeared, became a private investigator. In 1985, she used the Freedom of Information Act to petition the government for information regarding her father and his disappearance. Although she received over 5,000 pages of documentation from fourteen federal agencies, including the FBI and CIA, over one-third of the pages were censored, citing national security.

Sherry believes information found in those documents indicates that at least an additional four-hundred pages exist but were also withheld for claimed national security reasons.

Sherry Sullivan, Beneath a Portrait of Her Father

The name Floyd Park was frequently mentioned in the available documents Sherry received. Park told her he had seen her father, Rorke, and another man in Belize on October 1, four days after their last contact with the Miami International Airport.

Park told Sherry he believed the third man was a Cuban double agent who forced her father to fly to Cuba where he and Rorke were taken prisoners. Sherry believes that is a likely scenario because she says sources told her that Castro knew of her father and Rorke’s anti-Cuban activities and had placed a bounty on them.

Park refused to divulge any additional information and he proved to be a shadowy figure. Sherry could not determine what activities he was involved in during the 1960s, how her father would have known him, or why he would have stopped to see him. Park refused to speak to Sherry again and soon disappeared. Sherry says his true identity cannot be confirmed.

Another name mentioned in the uncensored portion of the documents Sherry received, however, seems to corroborate Park’s story. Enrique Molina Garcia was thought to be a double agent for the Castro government. Sherry believes he was the third man on the plane and who, once aboard, forced her father to fly to Cuba.

Unconfirmed reports placed Garcia in Havana several years after Sullivan and Rorke’s disappearances. In addition, journalist Marty Casey told Sherry while he was in Cuba in 1965, he encountered two exiles who said they had met a man who claimed he had been in jail with Sullivan and Rorke shortly after their disappearances two years earlier.

I could not find a picture of Floyd Park or of Enrique Molina Garcia.

Cuban Prisoners?

Sherry Sullivan believes after being made to fly to Cuba, her father and Alex Rorke were taken prisoner and held, perhaps for decades, before being executed.

In an article in the Bangor (Maine) Daily News, she says credible reports had her father alive as late as 1991, twenty-eight years after his disappearance.

Geoffrey Sullivan and Young Sherry

In 2003, on the fortieth anniversary of Geoffrey Sullivan’s disappearance, a commemorative grave marker was unveiled in the Veteran’s Memorial Cemetery in his home town of Augusta, Maine.

The Veterans Administration is the first and, so far, only government agency to officially recognize Geoffrey Sullivan as “missing in action.”

Geoffrey Sullivan’s MIA Marker

In August 2009, a Maine court found Cuba guilty in the wrongful death of Geoffrey Sullivan; a federal court, however, overturned the decision in 2017. Sherry continues to fight to get the case tried again.

Sherry also founded the “Forgotten Families of the Cold War”, a group dedicated to determining the fate of those lost in America’s “proxy war.” She continues her efforts to determine the fate of her father and recover his remains.

Sherry Fights On

Both Cora Sullivan and Jackie Rorke died without learning the fate of their husbands, Geoffrey Sullivan’s mother, Mary, lived to age one-hundred-eight.

Relations between Cuba and the United States are far from copacetic, but they have improved greatly since the Fidel Castro era or even since his brother Raul stepped down as President in April 2018. Perhaps the progression will soon lead to learning of the fate of the missing pilot and operative.

Cold War Casualties

SOURCES:

• Bangor Daily News
• The Education Forum
• Miami Herald
• Portland “Maine” Press Herald
• Unsolved Mysteries