Re: Real'Norma Rae' dies of cancer after insurer delayed treatment

On Sep 15, 6:52�pm, mgivel <mgi...@earthlink.net> wrote:

http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/09/real-norma-rae-dies-of-cancer-...
surer-delayed-treatment.html

ISS - Institute for Southern Studies

Facing South

Real'Norma Rae' dies of cancer after insurer delayed treatment

The North Carolina union organizer who was the inspiration for the
movie "Norma Rae" died on Friday of brain cancer after a battle
with her insurance company, which delayed her treatment. She was
68.

Crystal Lee Sutton, formerly Crystal Lee Jordan, was fired from her
job folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant in her hometown
of Roanoke Rapids, N.C. for trying to organize a union in the early
1970s. Her last action at the plant -- writing the word "UNION" on
a piece of cardboard and standing on her work table, leading her
co-workers to turn off their machines in solidarity -- was memorialized
in the 1979 film by actress Sally Field. The police physically
removed Sutton from the plant for her action.

But her efforts ultimately succeeded, as the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers won the right to represent the plant's employees on Aug.
28, 1974. Sutton later became a paid organizer for the union, which
through a series of mergers became part of UNITE HERE before splitting
off this year to form Workers United, which is affiliated with the
Service Employees International Union.

Several years ago, Sutton was diagnosed with meningioma, a type of
cancer of the nervous system. While such cancers are typically
slow-growing, Sutton's was not -- and she went two months without
potentially life-saving medication because her insurance wouldn't
cover it initially. Sutton told the Burlington (N.C.) Times-News
last year that the insurer's behavior was an example of abuse of
the working poor:

"How in the world can it take so long to find out [whether they
would cover the medicine or not] when it could be a matter of life
or death," she said.

"It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."

Though Sutton eventually received the medication, the cancer had
already taken hold. She passed away on Friday, Sept. 11 in a
Burlington, N.C. hospice.

"Crystal Lee Sutton was a remarkable woman whose brave struggles
have left a lasting impact on this country and without doubt, on
me personally," Field said in a statement released Friday. "Portraying
Crystal Lee in 'Norma Rae,' however loosely based, not only elevated
me as an actress, but as a human being."

Field won an Oscar, a Golden Globe and the Best Actress award at
the Cannes Film Festival for her portrayal of the character based
on Sutton. The film in turn was based on the 1975 book "Crystal
Lee: A Woman of Inheritance" by New York Times reporter Henry P.
"Hank" Leiferman.

Sutton was only 17 when she began working at the J.P. Stevens plant
in northeastern North Carolina, where conditions were poor and the
pay was low. A Massachusetts-based company that for many years was
listed on the Fortune 500, J.P. Stevens is now part of the WestPoint
Home conglomerate.

In 1973, Sutton, by then a mother of three, was earning only $2.65
an hour.

That same year, Eli Zivkovich, a former coal miner from West Virginia,
came to Roanoke Rapids to organize the plant and began working with
Sutton, who was fired after she copied a flyer posted by management
warning that blacks would run the union. It was that incident which
led Sutton to stand up with her "UNION" sign.

"It is not necessary I be remembered as anything, but I would like
to be remembered as a woman who deeply cared for the working poor
and the poor people of the U.S. and the world," she said in a
newspaper interview last year. "That my family and children and
children like mine will have a fair share and equality."

For more on Sutton's life and work, visit the website of the Alamance
Community College's Crystal Sutton Collection.

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