In 1993, when he was 48, Jim Graham learned a secret that turned his whole world upside down—that his father wasn’t John Graham, the gruff and distant man who raised him. His biological father, he discovered, had been a Catholic priest, Father Thomas Sullivan. It was a secret that Sullivan, Graham’s mother, and John Graham took to their graves.
When Graham was a small child, his mother left Buffalo with Father Sullivan, taking the boy along. But ten months later, private detectives had tracked them down and Graham was returned to his home. The church did everything possible to ensure that the boy would never know about his origins.
Graham was determined to uncover the truth, but the church thwarted him at every turn. To bury the scandal, it used its vast power and all its resources to obstruct, deny, and obfuscate.
Graham sought answers from Father Sullivan’s order, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Father Savage, a contemporary of his father, after admitting that Graham looked just like the priest, warned him: “Forget the injustices of the past.”
But Graham persisted. For 25 years, he relentlessly chipped at the truth and hammered away at the church gatekeepers, determined to find the information he believed was his birthright—proof that he was, in fact, Father Sullivan’s son.
Read about his tenacity and remarkable search in his new memoir, Buried Truth: A Poignant Story of a Man’s Search for His Father, Exposing Powerful Forces Bent on Hiding the Truth.
