from the Boston Globe, September 20, 2008
Susanna Burgett; courage marked battle with cancer
Diagnosed 14 years ago with breast cancer, which metastasized 11 years ago, Susanna K. Burgett brought a determined strength to living much longer than most would have projected.
To say thanks to those whose work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center guided her along the rocky path of illness, Ms. Burgett helped launch the concierge desk in the waiting area on the ninth floor of the hospital's Shapiro Building.
"She wanted to give back to Beth Israel," said her friend Laury Sorensen of Newton Centre.
"The concierge desk was there to greet people coming in for treatment. She viewed Beth Israel as her second home, and her caregivers as friends. She had the same outpatient nurse for 14 years, ever since she was diagnosed with cancer, which is very unusual."
Ms. Burgett, a lawyer who retired several years ago to concentrate on her treatment, died Sept. 4 at Tippett Home in Needham. She was 47 and had lived in Medfield.
"She was more brave than I'd be," Suzanne Burgett of Dryden, N.Y., said of her daughter. "She fought right to the end and she told me once, 'I'm going to beat this.' "
Born in Cobleskill, N.Y., Ms. Burgett was the older of two daughters and soon moved with her family to Woodstock, N.Y., where she grew up and graduated from high school after 2½ years. She went to the State University of New York at Plattsburgh, where she graduated summa cum laude, her mother said.
"She thought straight A's would be too much, so the one B she got was constitutional law, so naturally she became a lawyer," her mother said. "You can't do much with a degree in English, and her grandfather suggested law school."
At Boston College Law School, Ms. Burgett was in the same class as Sorensen.
"When I first met Susanna, she was very quiet and reserved, and I think that reserve really characterized her throughout her life," Sorensen said.
However, Sorensen added with a laugh, "I thought she was rather meek when I first met her, and I got that really wrong. Really, really wrong."
Ms. Burgett made the law review at Boston College and graduated in 1985. She practiced first with a law firm in Chicago, "but she missed Boston," her mother said. "She heard a firm was looking for people with bond experience, and that was her."
For the rest of her career, Ms. Burgett worked mostly in Boston at Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, though she also spent a couple of years as a lawyer for the government of Westchester County, N.Y.
"Everything she did in her life, she did beautifully," Sorensen said. "In her work life, she was the consummate attorney. In her personal life, she developed a really close cadre of women friends. She was always drawn to strong-willed women."Continued...
With intensity and intelligence that impressed all who knew her, Ms. Burgett had the kind of strength that "manifested itself in a quiet way," Sorensen said. "She was very intelligent and very articulate, but she was also a very good listener. She wasn't the kind of person that when you walked into a room you were overpowered by her presence, but you knew she was there and you were comfortable speaking with her."
Before and after she was diagnosed, Ms. Burgett mastered hobbies from gardening to sailing to buying and selling real estate. She had lived in the Back Bay and Brookline before moving to Medfield, and for a time had a vacation home on Cape Cod in Eastham.
"Susanna was the kind of person who always sought out passion and purpose in her life," Sorensen said. "Whether it be focusing on graduating early from high school so she could go to college, or graduating magna cum laude from law school, or seeking out things like sailing."
Later in life, Sorensen added, "she found a horse she fell in love with."
As health allowed, Ms. Burgett rode her horse, Kat, as often as possible and opened her home to Candy, a long-haired chihuahua-Welch corgi mix whose legs seemed to find the ground at an odd angle.
"She saw some of herself in Candy," Sorensen said. "She saw Candy as a survivor."
For many years, Ms. Burgett was a survivor, too. She attributed much of her unusual longevity to the care she received and made sure her nurses and doctors knew how much she appreciated the years they helped provide.
"It was very important for her to give back," Sorensen said of Ms. Burgett's volunteer work at Beth Israel. "It was unusual for a cancer patient to continually come back for treatment for so long. She knew her life would be shortened. None of us knew how much time she had, and the time she had really was a testament to her and the treatment she received at Beth Israel."
In addition to her mother, Ms. Burgett leaves her sister, Kitty Fuller of Groton, N.Y.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today in The Peace Abbey in Sherborn.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
