Valerie Burgher, METPRO Grad, Dead at 34
Valerie Burgher, a New York-based black journalist and writer who battled bipolar disorder, was hit by a train in a Brooklyn subway station Wednesday night and died hours later of her injuries, the family said today. She was 34.
Los Angeles-based writer Gary Dauphin, who first worked with Burgher at the Village Voice in the early 1990s and is serving as a spokesman for the family, said it was unclear how she came to be hit by the train. Police said Sunday no witnesses had been identified. On Friday, after an external examination, the New York City Medical Examiner’s office ruled the death a suicide, spokeswoman Ellen Borakove told Journal-isms.
As described by the National Institute of Mental Health, “Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person’s mood, energy, and ability to function. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. They can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. But there is good news: bipolar disorder can be treated, and people with this illness can lead full and productive lives.”
The family said in a statement that “her own difficulties inspired in her a deep concern for regular people confronting implacable social forces and impersonal institutions.”
Novelist Colson Whitehead told Journal-isms Sunday, “Valerie was a sweet and beautiful soul and we were lucky to know her. Some of the best times of my life were spent with her at the Village Voice, as our group of young writers learned the ropes together. Her struggles with her illness were a real tragedy.”
An edited version of the family’s statement reads:
“Valerie was a native New Yorker who attended public high school in Queens. She went on to Yale University, and after graduating in 1994 became an intern at the Village Voice, where she worked for many years covering New York City politics. . . . She left New York for the Los Angeles Times, where she participated in the Times Mirror Co.’s Minority Editorial Training Program (METPRO), which in turn brought her back to New York, where she worked as a reporter for Newsday.” She was in the METPRO/Reporting program in Los Angeles in 1997-98. Her byline last ran in Newsday on Aug. 10, 2003. “Her writing appeared in numerous other venues as well, ranging from the Nation to Africana.com.
“In addition to all the usual hurdles facing a black woman in the newsroom, Valerie struggled for many years with bipolar disorder, and her own difficulties inspired in her a deep concern for regular people confronting implacable social forces and impersonal institutions. She wrote with great passion and a sense of mission about students saddled with bad schools, about single mothers fighting to make homes for their children, about desperate patients in life-or-death battles with city bureaucracies and insurers. In the last year she had thrown herself into a new venture, becoming an associate producer for a fledging documentary film company, and she found herself at times struggling to pay for her medications and care, a situation she noted with trademark irony that she had written about on more than one occasion.
“She faced these struggles with a wry humor as well as an underlying sense of outrage; she understood her own fight as part of the larger struggle for fairness and dignity being fought by the mentally ill and uninsured everywhere.
“A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, June 6, at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, 4714 Glenwood St., Little Neck, N.Y. 11363.
“Friends who would like to share thoughts and remembrances about Valerie are warmly invited to do so at the service. Burial will be following the service at Pinelawn Cemetery in Long Island.
“Valerie’s mother, Sonia Burgher, has asked that instead of flowers, contributions be made in Valerie’s name to NAMI â?? the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The organization can be reached through its Web site at www.nami.org.
“Valerie is survived by her mother and father, as well as by her younger brother Warren.”
- Valerie Burgher, IntoTheFray.com: The anti-pleasure principle
- Valerie Burgher, Newsday: A Husband Who Thought Only of a Reassuring Call
- Victor Tan Chen, IntoTheFray.com: Remembering Valerie [Added June 8]
- Emi Endo, Newsday: Valerie Burgher, 34, former reporter for Newsday; associate producer [Added June 8]