Real "Norma Rae" has died of cancer

By Ilene Winkler

Remember the movie "Norma Rae"? Sally Fields played a feisty young mill worker whose courageous fight led to the unionization of a notorious anti-union employer in North Carolina.

Now the "real Norma Rae," Crystal Lee Sutton, has died of cancer after another battle -- this time with her insurance company after they delayed treatment for two months. The online Daily Kos has a good story about her struggle.

Crystal Lee was one of my heroes. When I worked as a tech at the phone company my co-workers used to call me Norma Rae because I was such an outspoken union woman, in a job that was mostly male. So her death hit hard.

Now I'm the director of SHARE's metastatic programs and I talk to many women who are struggling to pay for treatment. They are terrified they won't be able to continue working and will lose their insurance. Their insurance companies put arbitrary limits on the number of chemo treatments they can get. They can't get treatment because they have no insurance. Or the good cancer hospital doesn't accept the insurance they do have.

Crystal Lee, a fighter to the end, said that the insurance company denying treatment was, "in a way, like committing murder." I agree.

In the most famous scene in Norma Rae, Sally Fields jumps up on a table holding a sign saying "Union." Today I'm imagining Crystal Lee Sutton standing on a hearing table in Congress with a new sign, "Health Care for All NOW."

Posted September 15, 2009.

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Congratulations
This METS MATTERS BLOG is terrific and so valuable to our members!
Thank you so much!
When I read this blog about Crystal it gave me so much hope........Against all odds..........
What a brave woman she was!
Thanks to Share programs last Spring I learned after 2 years
if you have Stage IV cancer you automatically qualify for Medicaid
Health Insurance.
The programs are so educational & very supportive!!!!!!!!!!

— Susan Samuel

Thanks, Ilene, for your thoughtful post about Crystal Lee, a real life hero to so many. Such a tragic irony that this woman warrior had to battle the insurance company for her care. At least in death she got the recognition she deserved. I only wish she had lived to see this.

BTW, good for SHARE for putting metastatic breast cancer front and center on your handsome new website, rather than burying it in some obscure menu, so the newly diagnosed don't see it and freak out.

-- Musa Mayer

—

It's so sad! We have to keep up the fight for recognition...and WE DO! We're a group of very strong women who continue the battle and every once in a while, we win. Maybe not in time for everyone, note Crystal; but, the battle continues.

— Muriel Goldblatt

clear!