Burton Hersh

Hersh, Burton David, “Burton,” of St. Petersburg, Florida and Bradford, New Hampshire passed away peacefully, April 25, 2025 at St. Petersburg’s Bayfront Medical Center in the Hospice Unit. Born in Chicago and raised in Minneapolis, his graduations from The Blake School in Hopkins, Minnesota and from Harvard College, magna cum laude, were followed by a Fulbright year at the university in Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Germany. 

 Burton’s writing career started during the Fulbright grant and the extended few months he spent in Europe afterwards. Returning to the United States in 1957 he was drafted, and returned to Germany as a married GI, ultimately a military translator. While still in college he had signed on with a prominent literary agency, Curtis Brown. Once returned to the US in 1961, he began to support himself with long pieces for magazines such as Esquire and Holiday. For several years he was a feature writer for Ski Magazine. His first novel, The Ski People, was published by McGraw Hill in 1968.

 Burton had known Ted Kennedy in passing in college. By the late Sixties Ted was rising in prominence when Burton did a long feature for Esquire, and ultimately a long biography, The Education of Edward Kennedy, published in 1970. After many years of research Scribner published Burton’s The Old Boys, long since established as the primary source for details about the foundation of the CIA. In 1978 William Morrow published a comprehensive book entitled The Mellon Family. In 2007 Carroll and Graf published Bobby and J. Edgar and in 2010 Counterpoint Press brought out Edward Kennedy: An Intimate Biography. Novels followed, among them the Landau trilogy. 

 When not writing Burton spent his time collecting paintings, playing tennis and skiing. riding his bicycle, working on his houses in the company of family and friends. A devoted husband and parent, his intense love of the arts and the artists who created them, and his ever-expanding family was intense.

 Preceded in death by his parents, Maurice and Florence Hersh of Minnapolis, Burton is survived by his wife of 67 years, Ellen Eiseman Hersh, by his son, Leo Hersh and his wife Heidi, his granddaughter Emily and her husband, Jordan Garrison, great granddaughters Olivia and Makenzie, and by his daughter, Margery Tilton, granddaughter Eva, Eva’s father, Seth Kerns, and by his cousin, Bruce Chemel, and many other cousins. 

A graveside service will be held on Friday, May 9, 2025 at 11:00 A.M. in Sunny Plain Cemetery, Bradford, NH.

 In lieu of flowers, contributions in Burton’s memory can be made to The Blake School in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the St. Petersburg Free Clinic in St. Petersburg, Florida.