I’ve been tasked with a handful of recommendation letters over the past few years. It comes easier to me— speaking to what makes a colleague or intern exceptional. Yet it carries a sense of immense pressure. Will these words hold a candle to the person they describe? The answer is mostly no. With all of the beauty of language at our fingertips, someone doesn’t simply fit within the margins of a page. That’s certainly the case for our friend and The Sopris Sun’s guiding star these past several years, Raleigh Burleigh. But here goes …
I grew up in Carbondale, same as Raleigh, but our lives didn’t cross until The Sun shone a path. It was 2019 when I first heard of this intriguing fellow after I enrolled in the theater program at Colorado Mountain College. He had acted in the school’s production of “Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead” two years before, and the reminiscing of his wistful performance, as Hamlet no less (but with fewer lines, he jests today), echoed. I found myself already measuring myself up (a terrible habit he’s tried to break me of) to an artist I’d yet to meet, but somehow knew I was destined to.
The chance came at the onset of COVID, shrouded in the darkness in the wee hours one morning outside his parents’ Satank home, we traded off the papers he’d volunteered to transport; I was paid to do half the route.
He was a board member at the time, while working as the news director at KDNK. A year later, Raleigh was hired as the editor, taking over for another Carbondale local who lived and breathed the role, Will Grandbois, who’s said to have left Raleigh a note that went something like: no editor is perfect; you’ll make your mark. Will the Wise foretold the future.
The Sun has grown to a regular 24-page paper, inviting local poetry and art weekly through the Works in Progress page, while teaching young people the imperativeness of journalism in a democracy through the Youth Journalism Program and balancing the access of print journalism for monolingual Spanish speakers by printing, for five years now, Sol del Valle. Raleigh hasn’t only left a mark, but set a bigger table.
The result? I’ll echo Sol Del Valle Editor Biana Godina’s sentiment in her column two weeks ago: a publication that even more wholly reflects its community. Conservatives, liberals, Christians, atheists, Latinos, Anglos, all are lent an ear and ink on the page. At a time when civil discourse is elusive, The Sopris Sun and Sol del Valle have strived to include diverse voices.
Raleigh would be the last person to assume all the credit. His wins are all of ours; our failures are his own. He shares responsibility for every correction we run and the accolades of his accomplishments, including the prestigious Colorado Press Association’s Innovation Award bestowed upon him in 2022.
Raleigh is the most thoughtful listener, making space for every conversation, whether it be with a source, colleague or friend. His open spirit makes every chance encounter full of possibility. Take his introduction with Sopris Sun cartoonist Larry Day, for example, on a rainy day at Staircase Park that led to a beautiful partnership.
He lets little, if anything, fall through the cracks, dutifully monitoring our news inbox that easily receives a hundred emails a day (some of it junk, to be fair), promptly returning messages and jotting down reminders, colorfully coded in pristine penmanship.
He is a friend to many of us, which makes this so much more than a transition. He’s part art of the fabric of our community, having grown up here to later explore South America and share the wonders of his adventures eloquently. Many of us would never have known about the Indigenous Mapuche, people of the earth, and the land on which they’ve long lived, that was carved up by colonialism, and their resistance that continues today.
At the time of someone’s passing, an elder Mapuche storyteller, wepife, shares wholly and honestly about their life. While Raleigh has yet to grow into those years, I believe he will be one of the best truth-tellers to ever live. In the meantime, he’ll continue walking through the makings of a beautiful story of his own.
Until we meet again, old friend.