Today’s obituary: Deborah Pellow, 80, taught anthropology at Syracuse University for more than 40 years

Remembered as an “accomplished anthropologist, friend, and mentor,” Deborah Pellow died suddenly on Thursday, May 30.

She was 80 years old.

According to her obituary , Pellow was born in Los Angeles, CA, on March 21, 1945, the only child of Frieda Kaplan and David Pellow.

At age five, she and her mother moved to New York City and then to Philadelphia, where she “grew up in the loving care of her mother’s large extended family.”

She joined Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs as a professor of anthropology in 1978 after receiving her BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from Northwestern in 1974.

Pellow “became a seminal figure in her field,” her obituary in her field. She was at SU for more than 40 years.

“She undertook fieldwork prim