He was awarded Coast Guardsman of the Year in the 2000s. He coached NFL players when they were kids. He just won a city council seat. And, he is a Winthrop student.
His name is Perry Sutton, a Rock Hill native who won a runoff election on Feb. 23 against incumbent Nikita Jackson for the Ward 5 city council seat. He is also a senior history major at Winthrop, set to graduate in May.
Eddie Lee, professor of history, said Sutton’s dedication to his classes is remarkable, considering all he has going on.
“He’s in a class that meets on Mondays and Wednesdays. So the election for the Rock Hill city council seat that Perry won was on a Tuesday. Perry was sitting there in my class on a Monday doing what Perry always does, asking good questions, answering questions that I posed to him, commenting on various things that we were talking about,” Lee said. “And then the day after he won, he was back sitting there in that class doing the same thing.”
Sutton said he wasn’t even considering going to college after he left his last job, but after the VA told him he had to do something with his time, and that they would pay him, he thought he might as well.
Winthrop wasn’t even his first choice. At first, he was talked into going to Grand Canyon University, an online school, which he quickly found he did not enjoy. Next, he was going to go to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, but the day he was supposed to go for an interview, a man shot and killed two people inside a classroom.
Eventually, Sutton called Winthrop and got Katie Sardelli, former director of Military, Adult, and Transfer Services, who sold him on Winthrop.
“I’ll be graduating May the seventh in part because Katie Sardelli talked me into coming here. So no, there was no way. People will tell you, I was like, ‘No, I’m not going back to school,’” he said.
History was Sutton’s major of choice because he is a history buff. He said even though he looked at other majors, he always knew he was going to choose history.
“Now that I’m a city councilman, I’ll use it in making some decisions. If you use history, you see the decisions that were made that were mistakes. Well, being a history major, I hope I am smart enough not to make those same mistakes by looking at what was already done,” he said.
Sutton hopes to help improve his ward in several ways. Safety, he said, is his number one priority because gun violence is high in his area. He said the house next to his was shot up twice in one week, and it would have been shot up three times if a young girl had not been standing outside the house.
“I call it ducking bullets. And a lot of people think, ‘Well, that’s over there.’ I’m going to tell you something: when you are ducking bullets, it will move. We have this other neighborhood, not too far from there. The guy called me — and this happened before I was elected — he was outside with his kids and two cars rolled past. And when they rolled past, they shot at each other, went around, came back and shot at each other again. And that’s in Rock Hill,” he said.
Mental health, Sutton said, is his second priority. The homelessness problem in Rock Hill is related to both mental health and the lack of “affordable” housing, he said.
“I hate to say that word. Affordable housing. So what do you call affordable? But housing is expensive … For Winthrop students, it is really important. 97 — I’m just throwing out a number. I believe it is true — About 97% of the students when they graduate would not be able to afford a house,” he said.
Finally, Sutton said he wants to get more people involved in their community, for example, by partnering with Winthrop to get students out to help the Rock Hill community with the skills they are learning here at the university.
Sutton himself is deeply involved in the Rock Hill community. Beyond being a student and a city councilman, he also coaches the Sylvia Circle Demons, a youth football team that has produced five NFL players: Jadeveon Clowney, Stephon Gilmore, Chris Hope, Anthony Johnson and Rick Sanford.
Sutton said he plans to keep coaching the team, even with his city council seat.
“That was one of the things that I said because it keeps me, first of all, close to the kids and close to the people,” he said.
And with everything going on, Sutton still is enrolled in five classes at Winthrop. However, because he is a nontraditional student, he said he may not be getting the full Winthrop experience.
“I’ve enjoyed it. I have not really experienced Winthrop, and that’s because, first of all, I’m older. So actually, I use Winthrop as my getaway. I really do. I come hide here. Yeah, and so I’ve been an introvert on campus as much as I can be,” he said.
