CALGARY, ALBERTA — Raphael Sugarman, a columnist for the TimesLedger who wrote “From the Footlights” about Queens people working on Broadway, died Feb. 14 in Calgary. He was 56.
A former reporter for the Daily News, where he covered education and served as a member of the editorial board, Sugarman left to start his own consulting business, Blackboard Press, which helped city schools create newspapers produced by the students.
From 2004 through the end of 2012, Sugarman wrote columns about the players from Queens who took their bows at center stage and the legions of others, such as set designers, who worked on Broadway behind the scenes.
He spent two rounds at the Riverdale Press as sports editor and was briefly the editor of the Queens Courier.
Battling his own health problems, he returned to his native Calgary in 2013 to take care of his elderly mother, who survives him as well as a sister.
