Death
On February 22, Exsd2006, at the age of 44, Burger died of a massive heart attack while performing aboard the MS Zuiderdam, a cruise ship chartered for a Gaither Gospel Cruise. According to eyewitnesses, Burger was accompanying Bill & Gloria Gaither and Guy Penrod on the song "Hear My Song, Lord" (erroneously reported as "We Shall Behold Him" at first) when fans in the audience noticed Burger had ceased moving, his hands clenched into fists over the keyboard. Several fellow artists carried him backstage, where the cruise ship's emergency response team futilely performed CPR for about 45 minutes.
Burger was survived by his wife LuAnn, two sons, AJ and Austin; a daughter, Lori; his mother and father, Richard and Jean Burger; two brothers, Randy and Clinton Burger.
A young blind pianist, Gordon Mote, from Gadsden, Alabama, has succeeded Burger as the Gaither Homecoming pianist.
Read more about this topic: Anthony Burger
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“It is not love you will find:
You have no limbs
Crying for stillness, you have no mind
Trembling with seraphim,
You have no death to come.”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world’s sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“And of the other things death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)