Edgewood says goodbye to community leader

photo courtesy of Linda Burgess

DAN BURGESS PLAYED AN ACTIVE ROLE IN THE INCORPORATION OF THE CITY OF EDGEWOOD AND WAS ELECTED TO THE CITY’S FIRST COUNCIL IN 1995.

One of Edgewood’s founding fathers, Dan Burgess passed away Jan. 25 at 74 years of age.

Burgess moved from Florida to the Edgewood area in 1980, and soon became an active member of the community.

Burgess played an active role in the development of the city of Edgewood, finally leading to its successful incorporation in 1995.

In 1991, he organized the Sumner Heights neighborhood to obtain gas service through the installation of a gas line for the area.

He also helped start the North Hill Community Association before starting the process to incorporate the North Hill community into its own governing body – the city of Edgewood.

“The only way to retain our rural character and stop the encroachment of the surrounding cities was to incorporate into a city of our own,” Burgess said in his candidate’s statement for Edgewood’s first city council in

1995. Burgess served a two-year term on the council from 1995 to 1997.

Burgess was co-chair of the Cityhood for Edgewood Committee and helped prepare the city for incorporation by writing the intention document, establishing city boundaries, writing the budget and ballot initiative.

His vision was to help create a city that is “dedicated to preserving the ‘North Hill way of life’ while still living within its means.”

“We had a great community spirit and identity here on the North Hill and he didn’t want to lose that. The surrounding cities wanted pieces of Edgewood,” wife Linda Burgess said.

“This took several years, endless hours and selfless toil. It takes someone who is relentless in the pursuit of a goal, someone who has vision and can work with likeminded people, someone who sees obstacles as milestones and someone who can be resilient in the face of adversity,” son Dan Burgess, Jr. wrote in a eulogy of his father. “My dad would say, ‘Good enough is the enemy of a job well done.’ It is this attitude that carried the day. I was proud of him and told him so.”

Dan Burgess is survived by his wife of 30 years, Linda, his four children, six grandchildren and mother, Lorraine Burgess.

Burgess was somewhat of a Renaissance man, with a passion for innovation and technological design as well as art, history, literature and the outdoors.

Burgess was an avid fisherman, craftsman, writer and a storyteller.

He led a successful career in computer systems technology, having a hand in several innovative and groundbreaking technological advances for the time, including the development of the first fully automated dam in the world, Rocky Reach Dam in Wenatchee, automated prescrip-

tion drug packag-ing and developing some of the earliest loan scorecards.

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