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Claude Burgett, a former Honolulu Star-Bulletin editor who helped with the startup of USA Today, died May 20 at home in Hilton Head, S.C. He was 82.
He died from heart and lung complications.
The veteran newsman worked as a reporter and editor for newspapers in Hawaii, California and Michigan, in addition to the Associated Press and USA Today, before retiring in 1998.
"He felt that it was a civic obligation to present the news accurately and responsibly," his wife, Susan Burgett, said.
Honolulu Star-Advertiser columnist David Shapiro said Burgett was a natural leader who had steel nerves even under the pressure of a big breaking story.
Burgett was Shapiro’s city editor at the Star-Bulletin. They later worked together at USA Today.
Shapiro said Burgett didn’t care who got credit for the work. He wanted to get the story done and the paper into print, Shapiro said.
During Burgett’s career, news delivery eras came and went — from typewriters and Teletypes to the age of the World Wide Web.
Burgett, who could type more than 100 words per minute, was assigned to be a journalist in the Navy. He enlisted in 1952, the same year he graduated from high school in Tennessee.
When discharged in 1956, he had achieved the rank of petty officer second class. Burgett served as a photographer and writer for Pearl Harbor’s weekly Shipyard Log. He also was editor of Pointer, Barbers Point Naval Air Station’s weekly publication.
His wife was at a loss for words to portray the breadth of Claude Burgett’s life. "You don’t capture that in words," she said.
But for more than 45 years, words were Claude Burgett’s profession. He worked for the Star-Bulletin from 1956 to 1959 as a crime reporter and from 1967 to 1980 as a city editor, editorial writer and deputy managing editor.
In 1982 Burgett helped with the startup of USA Today. Three years later he became USA Today’s production editor. He held the post of senior production editor for about one year before retiring in 1998.
"He always seemed to take his greatest satisfaction from making others he worked with look good," Shapiro said.
After retiring from USA Today, Burgett enrolled at Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C. He graduated with honors.
For many years prior to becoming an art school student, Burgett had dabbled in painting, Susan Burgett said. "His passion was art, but he never got to do it because Uncle Sam said, ‘You’re coming with me.’"
She said her husband used watercolor paints to capture highly detailed nature scenes, as well as various types of architecture.
"He liked to represent reality in what he saw. He was not an abstract painter. He was a realistic painter," she said.
In addition to his wife, Burgett is survived by sons Michael and Kelly, daughter Barbara Graham and five grandchildren.
Burgett’s ashes will be scattered in the ocean off of Waimanalo later this month.
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