Valerie Burgher, 34, former reporter for Newsday

[Hyfler/Rosner]

Newsday (New York)
June 7, 2006 Wednesday
Emi Endo

Valerie Burgher, 34, former reporter for Newsday; associate
producer

Valerie Burgher, a former Newsday reporter who directed her
intelligence and passion toward telling the stories of
everyday people coping with life's hardships, has died at
age 34.

She was struck by a subway train last Wednesday night in
Brooklyn and died the next morning. The New York City
Medical Examiner's office ruled her death a suicide. Family
members said she had long struggled with bipolar disorder.
However, they also said they didn't believe she was in a
state of mind to take her own life.

Gary Dauphin, a friend and writer in Los Angeles, wrote,
"Her own difficulties inspired in her a deep concern for
regular people confronting implacable social forces and
impersonal institutions."

At a memorial service at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church
in Little Neck yesterday, her aunt, Sylvia Valerie Case,
said Burgher's loss should "inspire us to change the things
in the world she wanted to change." Friends recalled
Burgher's musical talents, as well as her wry humor and
rapier wit.

The native New Yorker described herself as being "of
Jamaican, Spanish and British descent" in a 2003 column she
wrote about getting into Yale University, where she earned a
degree in English literature. She wrote that, as a Queens
public school student, she was "an above-average student
working an after-school job and raised by a single mom
earning the average American salary. Colleges in 1989 were
busting down my door, not because of my SAT scores, but
because I showed promise and moxie as a person of color."

After she graduated, she worked as an intern, then freelance
writer for the Village Voice before becoming a reporter
trainee for the Los Angeles Times in 1997. A year later, she
started at Newsday and covered government and politics.
Before leaving in June 2003, Burgher urged colleagues in an
e-mail to "Keep fighting the good fight without me, remember
your Mencken," referring to the H.L. Mencken advice to
journalists to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the
comfortable."

Newsday business editor Ben Weller called her an "extremely
smart, talented writer. She was passionate about her
profession and cared deeply for the people whose struggles
she wrote about."

Later, she worked on media campaigns at a New York
advertising agency. About seven months ago, she became an
associate producer for a fledging Brooklyn documentary film
company.

Survivors include her mother, Sonia Burgher, of Douglaston,
Queens; her father, Huntley Burgher, and a brother, Warren
Burgher, both of Miramar, Fla.

Burial was in Pinelawn Memorial Park in Pinelawn. Memorial
donations can be made to the National Alliance on Mental
Illness, at NAMI Donor Services, P.O. Box 630577, Baltimore,
MD 21263-0577.

[rosusam...@gmail.com]

You are still remembered Valerie old friend. In June of this year (2016) you will have been gone for ten years. I still think of you, our childhood together in Jamaica, our love of Sesame Street, Raggedy Anne Dolls and your mother's delicious chocolate milk.

Walk with the Angels my friend, much love and respect.

Suchi