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By Richard L. Stein

June Bingham died at her Independence Avenue home on Tuesday afternoon at the age of 88. She was a descendant of one of New York's most prominent political and banking families. Her first husband, Jonathan B. Bingham, was a groundbreaking reform Democratic congressman and her second husband, Robert Birge, is a financier with a master of divinity degree. She was the mother of four children, grandmother of 10 and great-grandmother of 14. But she was very much her own woman.

An author, playwright and health advocate, she was a frequent contributor of Op-ed pieces to The Riverdale Press, The New York Times and other publications.

She submitted a stunning piece to The Press, which ran on the front page of the July 5 issue, announcing to the community that she had metastasized cancer and that she had opted for hospice care rather than aggressive treatment.

Her decision would not have come as a surprise to readers who saw the 1991 Op-ed piece in which she quoted her father's advice about dying, "Always leave while the party is good."

After the article appeared, her friend, Jane Genth made up "Lance Armstrong" bracelets she called The June and gave them to contributors to the Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

Ms. Bingham refused to let her illness slow her down. In her last days she completed work on a memoir, Braided Lives, which will be published by the Strauss Historical Society and distributed by Syracuse University Press.

Her most recent play, a musical called Asylum: The Strange Case of Mary Lincoln, written in collaboration with composer Carmel Owen, was produced off-Broadway last September with backing from many of her Riverdale friends.

A year ago, she also published a compilation of the Doctor and Patient columns she and her physician, Dr. Gerald Neuberg, had written together for The Press.

Ms. Bingham was born June Rossbach in 1919. Her grandfather was Mayer Lehman, one of the founders of the great Lehman Brothers firm on Wall Street. Her mother was Clara Lehman Rossbach and her uncle was Gov. Herbert Lehman, for whom Lehman College was named.

She attended Vassar College and graduated from Barnard College.