Rest In Peace, Crystal and Alan

Crystal Lee Sutton just died on Friday September 11, last week. Alan Turing died on June 7, 1954, but both of these people are worth remembering with respect and gratitude.

Then 33-year-old Sutton was working as a towel folder at J.P. Stevens in 1973, making just $2.65/hour, when a manager fired her for pro-union activity. Just before police dragged her off the premises, she wrote "UNION" on a piece of cardboard, and climbed a table on the plant floor. Co-workers responded to her act of brave defiance by shutting down their machines. The next year, the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) won the right to represent workers at seven plants in northeastern North Carolina. Hollywood thought Sutton's story was good enough to make into a movie, and in 1979, "Norma Rae" was released. Sally Field won an Oscar for her portrayal of the feisty textile worker, but Sutton herself received no financial return from the movie.
Sadly, Sutton succumbed to brain cancer, but even when she was fighting this monster, she was forced to take on her health insurer, at one point going two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover them. Obviously a fighter to the end, whether she wanted to be or not, Sutton once told an interviewer her philosophy. "Stand up for what you believe in, no matter how hard it makes life for you. Do not give up and always say what you believe.” she said.
It is always hard to lose such a person. After a life spent working to improve the lot of those she referred to as the working poor, may she rest in peace.

Like Sutton, Turing's actions affected the lives of many. Elected a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, in 1935, he became a Smith's Prizeman in 1936, winning one of the two prizes awarded annually to research students in theoretical Physics, mathematics and applied mathematics at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England. Turing's life might have played out differently but for the Second World War.
When war was declared in 1939, Turing immediately moved to work full-time at Bletchley Park. Working at the wartime codebreaking center, Turing helped crack Germany's secret codes by creating the "Turing bombe," a forerunner of modern computers. Turing's brilliance in breaking the codes generated by the German Enigma machines likely saved more lives of military personnel and civilians from the depravity that was Hitler's Nazism than can ever be known. He was awarded the O.B.E. in 1945 for his invaluable contribution to the war effort.
After the war, Turing created one of the first designs for a stored-program computer, and continued his involvement with decoding and intelligence work. Unfortunately, in 1952 he was threatened with blackmail over his homosexuality, and trustingly went to the police for help. Instead, he found himself being arrested for violation of British homosexuality statutes and tried as a homosexual on 31 March 1952. Found guilty, he was given the choice of prison or chemical castration. He chose the latter and tried to get on with his life but that was when the total breakdown of his world began.
His security clearance was taken away from him after his conviction and the man who had helped his country to survive the war was then regarded as a security risk because of his knowledge of the work going on at GCHQ. Turing was found dead of cyanide poisoning in 1954.
Finally, last Friday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown offered a posthumous apology to the World War II hero, saying Turing "deserved so much better" than the treatment he received from the postwar United Kingdom. "It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War II could well have been very different," Brown said. "He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war....The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. We're sorry, you deserved so much better."
The apology comes too late for Turing himself, but maybe it can do some good for the cause of others who, like himself, don't fit the "norm". Turing gave so much effort to saving others from the cruelty of the Nazis during his life, to be able to give again now and finally receive some much-deserved recognition might finally give his spirit a chance to rest in peace.