In Memory

Shirlee Burgess (Talbot) - Class Of 1938

Shirlee Burgess (Talbot)


Shirlee Burgess Talbot, born February 22, 1920 in Detroit, Michigan, died on June 17, 2010, in Sacramento at age 90.  No service was held for her at her request.  Which was a shame.  If there had been one, I would have said, "I literally owe my life to this wonderful woman who was my mother for 64 years."  At age four, following a head injury, I went into a coma.  My heart stopped, and I stopped breathing.  Unable to revive me, Shirlee summoned a neighbor, who was a nurse.  She told my mother, "I am sorry, Shirlee, Steve's dead."  Refusing to give up, Shirlee and my brother John got me into the family's unreliable 1946 Oldsmobile.  It rarely started.  On this day, it did on the first turn of the key.  A race began to the hospital, which by all reason and logic should have been over before it began.  Cuddling me in her arms, she entered the emergency room screaming for help.  Miraculously, quick acting nurses and a doctor, whose name was never really known, came to her aid.  While they worked on what seemed like mission impossible, mom found the hospital chapel and began a desperate litany of prayer.  She even promised her life if God would save mine.  As she looked up and out of the chapel window facing the San Gabriel Mountains, Shirlee said she saw a vision of God appear over the mountains.  Moments later, a nurse came in to say I had come out of the coma and the prognosis was good, I would make it.  God spared both my life and mom's that day.

Shirlee did not belong to clubs, wasn't an athlete or world traveler.  She did have a great-great-great-grandfather, Seth Burgess, who fought in the Revolutionary War.  And her mother, Faybelle, was named after her grandfather's favorite race horse.  Shirlee never really had a lengthy job or made headlines.  She was a loving wife and homemaker to her husband Jack, who preceded her in death in 1994, after more than 50 years of marriage.  They had two sons; John, who with his wife Grace and children lives in Sacramento, and Steve, who with his wife Jane, lives in Bakersfield, and their son in Los Angeles.  Shirlee could be a candidate for the Local Bank Hall of Fame, as she and Jack, who were never rich, mortgaged the house a couple of times to pay for that head injury, braces, and to make sure their sons could get something the two parents never had - college educations.  Shirlee and Jack paid back every cent they ever owed.

Shirlee faced several battles of courage after Jack died.  First, she went legally blind with macular degeneration.  Then, she grew gradually deaf, eventually unable to hear without hearing aids.  Two years ago, she lost the ability to use her legs.  Yet, through it all, she had an amazing will to live.  On June 17, she staged one last battle against pneumonia and sepsis.  Steve told Shirlee, "we all love you, mom, and God does, too."  With literally her last breath, Shirlee whispered back, "I know, and I love you all, too."  Shirlee passed quietly from the world, without expecting ink or applause.  I couldn't let that happen.  She saved my life, and we loved her.

The Bakersfield Californian, June 23, 2010