Pharmacy Dept. mourns loss of colleagueAnnette Alice Sautter, 45, who was employed in the MUSC Medical Center's Pharmacy Department, died Aug. 13 in an automobile accident.Ms. Sautter was born near San Bernardino, Calif., on April 21, 1959. She was the daughter of Rudy and Carolyn Sautter of Ellensburg, Wash. She was a graduate of the University of New Mexico's College of Pharmacy, working as a pharmacist in Albuquerque and then Olympia, Wash., before moving to Charleston in 2000. She is survived by her parents; her siblings and their spouses, Kathy and John Sand of Ellensburg, Becky and Clint Swanstrum of Ellensburg, and Neil and Darla Sautter of Maple Valley, Wash.; and many nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. Relatives and friends attended a memorial service Aug. 19 at St. Luke's Chapel in downtown Charleston. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to Shared Hope International,
P.O. Box 65337, Vancouver, Wash., 98665. SHI works in India to redeem
and restore the lives of young girls involved in forced prostitution there.
(Please note “In memory of Annette Sautter.”)
Words of Gratitude for the Life of Annette
Alice Sautter
How fitting that we should be in St. Luke’s Chapel as we celebrate the life of our friend and colleague Annette, for she, like St. Luke, was a lover of people as ends rather than as means, a person of compassion, and, as Luke’s very name implies, a seeker of light and truth. Those of us who have had the pleasure of having known Annette under-stand that she clothed herself in all of these qualities, yet she did it without broadcasting them to us. She had a quiet charm and a serene manner and a funny little giggle that always made us feel at ease with her. Annette’s own name means “graceful,” and how well that name fit her, for I never saw her lose her cool, even under the most trying of circumstances. At MUSC we work in a very tense setting. Here, patients are often acutely ill, so timeliness and pre-cision are of the utmost importance in making patients well. Pressure is very high, and tempers often run higher, but Annette used her dis-arming charm, her keen wit, and her infectious laughter to diffuse any tense situation. She, unlike many of us who always have the right comeback all-too-quickly for our own good, refused to speak rashly. She waited to open her mouth until she was able to think about things, and when she did, what came out were cool refreshing waters or warm healing springs. Her words were always full of grace. Annette was just plain kind to people. I loved and will not forget her kindness; it was so attractive to all of us. She always remembered people’s birthdays and brought us together to share them, she always checked up on us to see how things were going or to see if she could help us out of a mess, whether it involved our work or our lives. Annette believed that people were more important than things, and she somehow effortlessly, in contrast to most of modern society, apprehended that even in the information age, people still need to be more important than knowledge. Her actions toward others—towards me—have told on her. She, like men of old, like St. Luke, in whose chapel we sit, most wanted to live, to move, and to have her being in He whom Luke recorded as the Unknown God who could be known. She knew who He was from very early on, and she, like the ancients whose poetry Luke recorded, desired to be His offspring. Annette, like Luke, valued compassion and practiced compassion. She was deeply offended that people could not love one another. She was affronted and grieved by the fact that we have made and cultivated a gap between the rich and the poor, the cultured and the simple, the educated and the uneducated. And she did something about it. She somehow successfully broached that gap, and the most obvious answer to the question of how Annette did this so well was that she did her part to live simply, to find joy in simple things, and to find common ground with people over simple things. As a result, Annette’s quest for personal fulfillment could be measured not by how many things she could gather, but by how her experiences could be used to ground her to the beautiful earth on which she lived and the people with whom she shared it. That’s why she often reveled in locating herself along a strip of land near the roaring, uncontrollable ocean, drawing her feet through billions of grains of well-traveled, well-trodden sand, and listening to the testimony of the brilliant, ancient stars, the witnesses to her intentional and purposeful creation and indeed to the lives of men. Because she liked to share, she was as content to listen in conversation as to talk. She had a sense of place and a sense of order, so she was equally at ease with those thought of as possessing a high station as with those who were not, and we loved her and we laughed with her and, to the extent that we learned her sometimes enigmatic ways, we shared her joy of the simple. I know I can speak for all her colleagues in saying that there will be a hole here at MUSC that cannot be patched using the scientific method, nor by practicing the healing sciences which, as we can all sadly attest too well, only go so far. We will miss you Annette. Friday, Aug. 27, 2004
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