John Vladimir Burke
July 31, 1942 - December 29, 2022
John Vladimir Burke was born in New York City on July 31, 1942. His mother, Vera Mazor, was a Ukrainian Jewish stetl immigrant in the 1930’s. His father, John Burke, was born in Irish Catholic Troy NY. His parents met on a picket line and John was a “red diaper” baby through the Rosenberg trial and the Red Scare years. John attended Hunter Elementary, Trinity School for Boys and Bronx High School of Science in New York. He studied piano at Julliard Prep with Irwin
Freundlich. As a teenager he became passionate about jazz and gained a reputation playing in bebop jazz groups.
For 20 years, John worked on the railroad as brakeman, fireman and then locomotive engineer – most of those years in San Francisco on the Southern Pacific. In 1970, he married the love of his life, Margaret Gannon, always “Peggy” to him. John left the railroad in the 1990’s to devote himself to being the full time home person while Peggy worked at her law practice. He seconded Gloria Steinem’s observation that “every working woman needs a wife.” He became a talented home cook bringing friends together for great dinner parties and music.
John was an egalitarian. The politics of liberation were central to his life and character. He had a keen, encyclopedic, independent mind with sweet spots for music, revolutionary politics, mathematics and poetry. He had a lifelong knack for friendship, maintaining relationships even back to his teenage years in NYC and befriending younger people who crossed his path. John maintained correspondence about science, politics, linguistics and history with scholars and writers – always for the pleasure of exchanging ideas and learning new concepts.
In mid-life, John returned to classical music performance. The joy of playing in chamber music ensembles never left him for the rest of his life. Music satisfied what he called his capacity for beauty.
John is survived by his lifelong partner, Margaret Gannon, Sara Burke, the daughter of his first marriage to Stephanie Kennedy, deceased, and his grandchildren, Moselle Nicholas Burke and Oscar Frederic Burke. encouraged to send stories about John to be included in readings at the wake.