He owned a restaurant in the northern Thai city and had lived there intermittently for the past three years.
Mr. Hoffman moved to the Washington area in 1955 and was a reporter and editor with Congressional Quarterly before joining the Washington Star in 1958.
He spent 14 years at the newspaper, including stints on the city, national and foreign desks, and was promoted to assistant managing editor in 1968.
Mr. Hoffman moved to the Washington area in 1955 and was a reporter and editor with Congressional Quarterly before joining the Washington Star in 1958.
He spent 14 years at the newspaper, including stints on the city, national and foreign desks, and was promoted to assistant managing editor in 1968.
Burt died of lung cancer on November 18 in a hospice in Chang Mai, Thailand, where he had been living in recent years, his daughter, Jean, has just informed me.
As many will remember, Burt was a deputy managing editor of the Star until he resigned in 1972. He was my direct boss when I joined the paper in 1969 and went out to Hong Kong as a correspondent. He was certainly one of the best editors I ever had, and I regretted his leaving the Star.
View full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/02/AR2010120205890.html
Attribution: By T. Rees Shapiro, Washingtonpost.com
After leaving the Star, he was for a while the editor (or maybe just AN editor, not sure which) of the National Journal. He was also the public relations man for a senator, from Michigan, I believe, but I forget which one. Then he was the resident representative in Jakarta, Indonesia, for some U.S. public relations firm, and later a USAID rep in Kiev, Ukraine. A varied career of interesting things.
Burt was later, in retirement, a gadfly back in his home town, Newport, RI, trying to keep the city council honest on sewer problems and other things, and occasionally knocking the Rhode Island state government on various issues.
He traveled extensively in Southeast Asia after all that, and finally decided to settle in Chang Mai, living above a little restaurant whose woman proprietor looked after him as his eyesight faded and his health generally failed. When my wife, Monica, and I had lunch with him in Bangkok last February, he was as full of perceptive observations on the world as ever but obviously in failing health.
Attribution: Henry Bradsher
Burt Hoffman went out of his way to come see me play Smee in the musical Peter Pan at Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, Rhode Island in late July 2009.
ReplyDeleteBurt was ill with cancer, and was fighting loss of eyesight, but he said he wasn't about to miss that show. "I used to be a salad boy right over there," Burt said, motioning to one corner of the restaurant that is attached to the theater. He would cross over the bay from Newport to earn money in the summers of his youth working at the theater complex.
Burt's family had settled in Newport, and was in the restaurant business, starting eating-places long before Newport became so trendy. We shared a love of Rhode Island. At The Washington Star, where he was a senior editor and I was a reporter and editor, and on Capitol Hill, where we both worked for the House Democratic leadership, that love kept us bonded. We both worked for Rep. John Brademas of Indiana, the House Democratic Whip.
The previous summer (2008), I had decided to spend a month in Rhode Island by staying with four different people for short stays. Burt was excited about my plans to stay with him because he loved to talk about the Star and he loved to talk politics with other people who loved to talk politics. (He was a regular e-mail correspondent).
Burt didn't warn me in advance. When I arrived he was in bed, having just undergone a debilitating series of chemo treatments for his cancer. It turned out to be the best of the four weeks. I spent the time taking care of Burt. Insisting that he eat. Getting him up out of bed. Making and freezing pasta gravy and meatballs in small portions for his future use. We talked about everything under the Sun. But before I left, he insisted and took me out to lunch. Later that week, he was having guests from Capitol Hill for lunch.
During my stay with him, he told me of his new love, Nani, a Thai woman he had met riding on a train in Thailand the year before. Before this first meeting with Nani was over, Burt had met most of her family on a couple unscheduled visits. I helped Burt edit some letters to officials in his effort to get a Visa for Nani to visit the United States. This effort never succeeded. Later that year, Burt returned to Thailand. He and Nani started a restaurant, and they lived above it.
Burt returned to Newport for a time the summer of 2009, and this allowed him to see Peter Pan. In Rhode Island, he was active in Common Cause, and constantly fought for water and sewer improvements in Newport, where he also kept his prize sailboat. His letters to the editor were biting.
Burt had been the unofficial commander of The Washington Star Navy, a collection of news people including Duncan Spencer, John Sherwood, and others who loved to sail in Maryland on Chesapeake Bay after work. But that summer of 2008, Burt was in the painful process of putting his prize boat (then anchored home in Newport) up for sail.
Burt returned to Thailand to be with Nani, but then came back to Washington in March (2010) to attend a book party for his son, Carl Hoffman, whose book The Lunatic Express, is about traveling as a common man in Asia. It struck me: that was how Burt met Nani.
He died in Chang Mai, Nov. 18, 2010. His son Carl wrote: "Off he has sailed; the final voyage from Chiang Mai this evening. I'll miss him very much. To think, to describe, what a father gives over a lifetime.... Sigh." -- ron sarro
Burt Hoffman went out of his way to come see me play Smee in the musical Peter Pan at Theater by the Sea in Matunuck, Rhode Island in late July 2009.
ReplyDeleteBurt was ill with cancer, and was fighting loss of eyesight, but he said he wasn't about to miss me in that show. "I used to be a salad boy right over there," Burt said, motioning to one corner of the restaurant that is attached to the theater. He would cross over the bay from Newport to earn money in the summers of his youth working at the theater complex.
Burt's family had settled in Newport, and was in the restaurant business, starting eating-places long before Newport became so trendy. We shared a love of Rhode Island. At The Washington Star, where he was a senior editor and I was a reporter and editor, and on Capitol Hill, where we both worked for the House Democratic leadership, that love kept us bonded. We both worked for Rep. John Brademas of Indiana, the House Democratic Whip.
The previous summer (2008), I had decided to spend a month in Rhode Island by staying with four different people for short stays. Burt was excited about my plans to stay with him because he loved to talk about the Star and he loved to talk politics with other people who loved to talk politics. (He was a regular e-mail correspondent).
Burt didn't warn me in advance. When I arrived he was in bed, having just undergone a debilitating series of chemo treatments for his cancer. It turned out to be the best of the four weeks. I spent the time taking care of Burt. Insisting that he eat. Getting him up out of bed. Making and freezing pasta gravy and meatballs in small portions for his future use. We talked about everything under the Sun. But before I left, he insisted and took me out to lunch. Later that week, he was having guests from Capitol Hill for lunch.
During my stay with him, he told me of his new love, Nani, a Thai woman he had met riding on a train in Thailand the year before. Before this first meeting with Nani was over, Burt had met most of her family on a couple unscheduled visits. I helped Burt edit some letters to officials in his effort to get a Visa for Nani to visit the United States. This effort never succeeded. Later that year, Burt returned to Thailand. He and Nani started a restaurant, and they lived above it.
Burt returned to Newport for a time the summer of 2009, and this allowed him to see Peter Pan. In Rhode Island, he was active in Common Cause, and constantly fought for water and sewer improvements in Newport, where he also kept his prize sailboat. His letters to the editor were biting.
Burt had been the unofficial commander of The Washington Star Navy, a collection of news people including Duncan Spencer, John Sherwood, and others who loved to sail in Maryland on Chesapeake Bay after work. But that summer of 2008, Burt was in the painful process of putting his prize boat (then anchored home in Newport) up for sail.
Burt returned to Thailand to be with Nani, but then came back to Washington in March (2010) to attend a book party for his son, Carl Hoffman, whose book The Lunatic Express, is about traveling as a common man in Asia. It struck me: that was how Burt met Nani.
He died in Chang Mai, Nov. 18, 2010. His son Carl wrote: "Off he has sailed; the final voyage from Chiang Mai this evening. I'll miss him very much. To think, to describe, what a father gives over a lifetime.... Sigh." -- ron sarro