Vesta Sutton Hutchins

Vesta Sutton Hutchins, widow of former University President Robert Maynard Hutchins, died March 17 in Palo Alto, Calif. She was 75.

She met Mr. Hutchins, whom she married in 1948, when she was a student in a Great Books Classics class taught by Hutchins and Mortimer Adler at Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago. Later, she worked with him on the first publication of the "Great Books of the Western World" series and the early stages of the major revised edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Hutchinses moved from Chicago to California after Mr. Hutchins founded the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in 1959. Mrs. Hutchins served on the board. A founding member of the Women's Board of the Pasadena Art Museum, she also served on the board of the Santa Barbara Citizens Planning Association and the New Perspectives Quarterly.

She is survived by a daughter, Barbara Sutton Hutchins, a grandson, two great-grandsons and a sister.