[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 25 (Tuesday, March 2, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E279-E280]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IN MEMORY OF SUSAN EATON

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. NANCY PELOSI

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 2, 2004

  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my sadness on the 
tragic early death of Susan Eaton, a wonderful woman who had recently 
become a noted professor at Harvard University's Kennedy School, but 
had also spent many years as an effective advocate for the rights of 
workers, particularly low-paid workers, throughout this country. Susan 
died of complications from leukemia on December 30, at the age of 46. 
Susan was also the wife of another remarkable person--my friend, 
Marshall Ganz--who worked with Cesar Chavez 39 years ago to help create 
the United

[[Page E280]]

Farm Workers union and who has continued doing pathbreaking organizing 
work over the last 39 years, as well as also becoming a Kennedy School 
professor.
  I would like to submit for the Record an obituary of Susan Eaton, 
which appeared in the Harvard Gazette.

               Teacher, Researcher Advocate--A Whole Life

       Esteemed Kennedy School faculty member Susan C. Eaton died 
     Dec. 30 of complications from leukemia. She was 46.
       Eaton was a tireless advocate for the rights of workers, 
     both as a union organizer and in her teaching and research at 
     the Kennedy School. Her husband and fellow faculty member 
     Marshall Ganz expressed it well: ``She was a deeply committed 
     person, a person who walked the walk. She translated her 
     values into action in her teaching, in her research, and in 
     her public life.''
       Eaton, an assistant professor of public policy, completed 
     her Ph.D. in industrial relations and organizational studies 
     at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts 
     Institute of Technology. She received her master's degree in 
     public administration from the Kennedy School. Her research 
     focused on challenges faced by low-wage workers, particularly 
     women providing health care, and the role of work 
     organizations, including unions, in addressing these 
     challenges. Last summer, Eaton received a Robert Woods 
     Johnson Award to study the links between quality of work and 
     quality of care in the nursing home industry. Eaton's 
     writings focused on work-family issues, women's roles in 
     union leadership, union-management relations, and the role of 
     management in the quality of nursing home care. She was 
     editor of the online Civil Practices Network and contributed 
     to several other industry journals and publications.
       Prior to entering academia, Eaton worked for 12 years as a 
     union negotiator, trainer, and manager for the Service 
     Employees International Union (SEIU), AFL-CIO, and CLC.
       She joined the Kennedy School faculty in 2000 and became a 
     highly regarded teacher, whose human resources course, 
     ``Leading and Managing People Well,'' received 
     consistently high marks, exemplifying the leadership model 
     she tried to teach.
       ``Susan brought a heightened awareness of others to our 
     community in her breadth of research and passionate 
     dedication,'' said Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye Jr. 
     ``She was a person who cared--about social justice, about her 
     work, about her students, about her colleagues. While 
     comfortable with the abstractions of social justice, she 
     applied her concerns every day in the way she treated each of 
     us as individuals.''
       Kennedy School Associate Academic Dean and Director of the 
     School's Weiner Center for Social Policy Julie Boatright 
     Wilson reflected on the loss of a colleague and a friend.
       ``Susan was a vibrant presence on the fourth floor of the 
     Taubman building,'' said Wilson. ``She had time for all of 
     us, was interested in what everyone was thinking about and 
     working on, and had advice and ideas and wisdom she willingly 
     shared. Even more than what Susan did for us is what she did 
     for the low-wage employees she had spent her life working 
     with and working for. Everything about Susan's activities--
     her scholarship, her teaching, her day-to-day interactions--
     exhibited her commitment to improving the lives of those who 
     provide the services we all need but for which we seem 
     remarkably unwilling to pay a decent wage.''
       Eaton's teaching earned her enormous respect from students 
     while her research brought attention to the issues that 
     touched her heart. ``She demonstrated that nursing homes and 
     hospitals could both do better by their workers and improve 
     the quality of care simply with better management practices. 
     Much of her work spoke to the dignity that both caregivers 
     and patients seek and deserve. This readily generalizable 
     lesson seems so terribly important in this increasingly 
     marketized era,'' said David Ellwood, Scott M. Black 
     Professor of Political Economy at the Kennedy School.
       Eaton was co-winner of the 1996 Margaret Clark award of the 
     Institute of Gerontology for the paper ``Beyond Unloving 
     Care: Linking Nursing Home Quality and Working Conditions.'' 
     Her other recent writings included: ``Career as Life Path'' 
     in ``Career Frontiers: New Conceptions of Working Lives,'' 
     edited by Maury Peiperl et al. (Oxford University Press, 
     2000); ``Work and Life Strategies of Professionals in 
     Biotechnology Firms,'' Annals of the American Academy of 
     Science, March 1999; and ``Pennsylvania's Nursing Homes: 
     Promoting Quality Care and Quality Jobs,'' Keystone Research 
     Center, April 1997.
       In addition to Ganz, Eaton is survived by her father, 
     William J. of Washington, D.C.; her mother, Marilynn, of 
     Alexandria, Va.; and her sister Sally Misare of Castle Rock, 
     Colo.

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