Paul Sutton - 2005
MHS 1939 Graduate
Dr. Paul M. Sutton, Class of 1939, was nominated to the Minerva High School AlumniHall of Fame by Dorothy Hawkins Cole and other members of the MHS Class of 1939. Upon graduation from Minerva High School, he attended Harvard University on a four year full-expense National Scholarship, graduating Magna cum Laude with a Bachelor's of Science degree in physics. War duty in the U. S. Navy followed, then a return to academics. From 1946 to 1951 he continued his education at Columbia University where he earned both M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in physics and served as a graduate instructor and research associate in the physics department.
On active duty for three and a half years, during and after World War II, Sutton served a total of eleven years in the U. S. Naval Reserve, culminating in service as Training Officer for Division 3-72, 3rd Naval District, New York City, during the Korean War. In World War II, following officer's training, he spent five months learning the operation and maintenance of a Top Secret acoustic homing torpedo, a successful weapon used against German submarines. He and his crew operated from Ascension Island, a volcanic cone in the center of the South Atlantic. The crew served a Naval B-24 squadron, VB-107, and, in 14 months, demolished four submarines with these torpedoes.
As the war wound down, the B-24 squadron was transferred to England, and Sutton and crew were sent to North Carolina, where, just before V-E Day, off Norfolk, Virginia, the only lighter-than-air (blimp) squadron with torpedoes sank another enemy submarine.
After the war Sutton was assigned to Inspector of Naval Materials at 30 Church Street, New York City. (Today this spot is known as Ground Zero.) After six months, he was assigned to serve as Instrumentation Coordinator for the Ordinance Evaluation Group at the Bikini Atom Bomb Tests where he witnesses the 4th and 5th atom bomb explosions.
Upon return, and entering Columbia, Sutton married Doris Nichols, a published poet and Associate Editor of the Fine Editions Press. (Today she is known as D. N. Sutton, and is the author of several books of poems.) They are the parents of two daughters. Pamela M. Sutton, M.D. worked abroad with the World Health Organization and is now Director of The Barbara Ziegler Program of Palliative Care and Hospice at the North Broward Hospital District in Broward County, Florida. Valerie J. Sutton invented the system for writing sign languages, and is Executive Director of the Center For Sutton Movement Writing, Inc., a California non-profit organization.
In the 1950s Sutton was employed as a section supervisor and research associate in the Research Laboratory of the Corning Glass Works in Corning, New York. In California from 1959 until 1987, he held the titles of Department Manager, Research Laboratory Manager, and Development Manager at the Ford Aerospace Corporation's California division at Newport Beach. His work at Corning involved theory and experiment on transmission of electricity and ultrasound through glass and development of techniques to measure stress in glass. His work at Ford Aerospace was chiefly optics and laser related, proposal preparation and research project administration.
From 1974 until the present he has been involved in management and planning for the Center for Sutton Movement Writing, Inc. founded by his daughter. The Sutton notation system permits writing of any of the world's many signed languages and has been proven as an excellent tool for teaching those who are born deaf. The system is being studied in thirty countries and is in effective use in Germany, Denmark, Brazil, Switzerland, Norway, Ireland, Malta, Canada and the U. S. For a person skilled in a particular sign language, anything written in that language in Sutton notation is easy to read. There are no other sign language writing systems for everyday use.
The Suttons have been residents of California since 1959 and live in the La Jolla part of San Diego. They tend to spend winter months in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they are active in poetry circles.