Rosemary Burgess

Our current Senior Star is Detroit resident Rosemary Burgess. Ms. Burgess was born in Detroit in 1939 and was raised in River Rouge. She is one of eight children. Of her seven siblings, four remain alive.

As a girl, Ms. Burgess attended Northrop Elementary School in River Rouge. She recalls that at that time black families lived on one side of the city and white families lived on the other side. She says the white children attended Ann Visger Elementary School while those in the black community attended Northrop. There was only one high school in the city where they would all eventually be thrown together as teenagers, and Burgess says the two schools worked together to arrange for the students at each school to meet the students on the other side of town as a way to become acquainted with one another, promoting a racial harmony. "And then when we went that fall to Rouge High, it wasn't as traumatic because we had kind of taken the opportunity to meet with each other," she recalls. 'I thought that was a really good thing for us to do."

In high school, Ms. Burgess enjoyed music class and played the clarinet.

Ms. Burgess married Leroy Burgess and the two enjoyed 61 years of marriage until his passing in 2018. They have three children Rhonda Mischeaux, Sherrie Brooks and Fritz Burgess and Burgess says she enjoys her 6 grandchildren. "My grandchildren are just an extension of what my husband and I worked so hard to do," she says. "They're very, very special to me."

Ms. Burgess has been employed at First National Bank and the United States Postal Service on Fort Street in Detroit. As a young wife, she went back to school at Wayne State University and holds a degree in Education and a Master's Degree in Library Science. She then put her degree to use and became an elementary school teacher. She taught first in Ecorse Public Schools, then in California when her family moved there in 1975 after her daughter was accepted at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She recalls she found it necessary to take lessons in Spanish as she taught many Hispanic children who were bilingual and had parents who spoke no English. "It was an opportunity to deal with young people who are just so ready to learn in most instances," she says. "I loved teaching."

When the Burgess family returned to Michigan in 1983, Ms. Burgess worked as a librarian in the Detroit Public Library system. She is now retired and says she continues to learn and enjoys reading about black history. She also enjoys jazz and R & B music, along with some classical. Her favorite singer is Aretha Franklin.

Ms. Burgess is also chairperson of the Friends of the Charles H. Wright Museum and is active in her church, Isom Memorial CME Church in Belleville. Her message to young people is to remind them how important they are and how they can be an inspiration to those around them if they study and learn. An advocate for education, she says, "They've got to love themselves first, and then they've got to understand how important education is."

If you are a Senior Star at least 80 years of age, please call the Telegram Office at 313-928-2955 to be featured in the Telegram Newspaper.