Carolyn Quintero from the Tulsa paper.

[Rankin, Robert L]

	The Tulsa World version apparently has a photograph also.   Bob

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	Business owner loved mastering languages
	
	by: JENNIE LLOYD

	Tulsa World
	6/15/2008 

	LINGUIST
	Carolyn Quintero: She wrote a dissertation for her doctorate in linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst about preserving the dying Osage language.
	
	Quintero, who spent 20 years studying, teaching and translating the Osage language into English and who also started a translation service, Inter Lingua Inc., died June 4 of cancer in Santa Monica, Calif. She was 62.
	
	Quintero was born exactly one week before Christmas 1945 to Lestine and Elmer Platter in Hominy. When she was a child, "you certainly could not wrap her birthday gift in Christmas paper," said her sister, Frances Sells of Broken Arrow.
	
	Growing up in Osage country, she heard her friends' grandmothers speaking their native language.
	
	"Every language gives you a unique look into the human mind," Quintero once said.
	
	From her first Spanish class at Hominy High School, she spent her life studying and collecting these "unique looks."
	
	She majored in French at the University of Oklahoma, but, just short of her bachelor's degree, she got married and moved with her new husband, Horacio Quintero, to his home country of Venezuela.
	
	Immersed in South American culture, Quintero picked up more Spanish and gave birth to a son and daughter.
	
	In 1980, she divorced Quintero and returned to the States. After finishing her bachelor's degree at OU, she completed a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. For her dissertation, she wrote about preserving the dying Osage language ?\ the words she'd heard in bits and pieces back in Hominy.
	
	Quintero moved to Tulsa in 1983 and opened Inter Lingua Inc. the next year, starting out by providing Spanish translations of business documents to Tulsa-area energy companies. She later added many other clients and languages to the mix.
	
	The University of Colorado at Boulder tapped Quintero in 1993 when it received a federal grant to study Osage in-depth.
	
	It was the project of a lifetime for Quintero, who spent years translating, researching and transcribing what she once called a "sophisticated, subtle language with lots of nuances."
	
	Quintero published two books on the language and was working on an Osage dictionary before she died.
	
	Her son, Marcos Quintero of Glenpool, recently took over running Inter Lingua after she moved to California with her fiance, Gordon Leamon. Her daughter, Anna Murdick, lives in San Raphael, Calif.
	
	It was Carolyn Quintero's dream to see the Osage people keep their language alive.
	
	"I'm not saving the language; I'm recording it," she said in 1996.
	
	"It's up to the Osages to save it."