Roswell O. Sutton, 89, Atlanta business and civic leader

By Rick Badie

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Roswell Sutton belonged to a lineage of men who prided themselves on wearing a swanky shirt and tie, spiffy shoes, and a hanky in the jacket.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I used to joke with him that he’d show up for a cookout in a shirt and tie,” said friend Bill Stanley of Atlanta. “He was a well-dressed man.”

Maybe his stylish ways fed his success. Or maybe it was the stuff he hoarded in the left pocket of his blazer — memos, notes and other correspondence.

“He had an office in that left coat pocket,” said his brother, Clyde A. Sutton Sr. of Atlanta. “Kept all kinds of stuff in there.”

At Citizens Trust Bank, he rose from bookkeeper to executive vice president. He retired in 1974. He then founded R.O. Sutton and Associates, a financial consulting business. For decades, he also served as vice president of finance for Paschal’s Concession, Inc., which operates restaurants at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

“He was conservative and he did things in a meticulous way,” his brother said. “He knew who he was and where he was going to go. He would have never been what those idiots were, and have become, on Wall Street.”

Roswell O. Sutton, 89, of Atlanta, died Aug. 19 of heart failure at Hospice Atlanta. The funeral will be 11 a.m. Wednesday in the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College. A wake will be held 6:30 to 8 p.m. today at Atlanta’s Friendship Baptist Church. Willie A. Watkins Funeral Home is handling arrangements.

Mr. Sutton graduated from Booker T. Washington High (1937). He earned his bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College (1941). He earned his master’s degree from the graduate school of banking at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (1953).

In Atlanta, the Army veteran was a bank official when blacks were anomalies in such positions. Because of his position, he helped many blacks buy their first homes.

Mr. Sutton wasn’t a golfer or a fisherman. His hobby was civic involvement. His record spans decades.

Boards he sat on include Atlanta Life Insurance Co.; the Butler Street YMCA; the George Washington Carver Boys and Girls Club; the Big Bethel A.M.E. Federal Credit Union; and the Phi Beta Sigma Federal Credit Union. He also served on the governor’s advisory council on mental health, retardation and substance abuse; and the advisory council of the Fulton County Alcoholism Treatment Center.

“This city was better off because he lived here,” his brother said. “He was always looking to make things better.”

Mr. Stanley and Mr. Sutton were acquainted through the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity. Both had served as international president. Mr. Sutton is the only member in fraternity history to be granted the status of international president emeritus, Mr. Stanley said.

“R.O. Sutton is the kind of man you want to have as a role model,” he said.

“And as a father.”

Additional survivors include his wife, Luel Cummings Sutton of Atlanta; a daughter, Patricia Crawford of Atlanta; two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.