I met Connie in the fall of 1975 during my first semester in graduate school. It was the beginning of the networking of women anthropologists orchestrated by Connie and her good friends, Happy Leacock, June Nash and Helen Safa. The connections of Columbia’s anthropology department of the 1950s crossed the Hudson and travelled down the NJ turnpike in terms of sharing of ideas of how and when and where and in what direction these bodies of theories, the experiences of women in the field, in departments and doing fieldwork, as well as the politics of doing political economy of women. Us graduate students would be in awe of the brilliance demonstrated before our eyes. We formed our own kinship network as we shared the intellectual bounty of minds, hearts, spirits and energy coming from this group. Connie took me on directly due to my work in Jamaica. To my chagrin, she edited my 1978 NIMH proposal, the editor’s pen at play. I received the grant! Later on, when my work with organized labor brought me to Barbados, our ties were affirmed. Our overlapping networks of colleagues/friends from the Caribbean and elsewhere always brought inquires of “who was staying at Connie’s?” when someone was in New York. The smart, the beautiful, the sophisticated Connie Sutton made her mark on me.
A. Lynn Bolles, Professor Emerita University of Maryland College Park