Happy Birthday at Eighty!

Today is my father's 80th birthday and, as luck would have it, it is my 25th wedding anniversary as well. A momentous day!

My father was born in one of the poorest towns in Eastern Kentucky (D.C. politicians went there to announce the start of the WIC program), in one of the poorest single-parent households in that town.

Not only did my father run away from home at age 14 or 15, he never graduated from high school; he got his GED in the Air Force, and Princeton took him on a risk because he wrote "crawl" letters to anyone and everyone he could in order to try to make something of himself.

And it worked! And he did!

Not only did my father graduate from Princeton, he also attended Howard University for a short time, and was a graduate student teacher at the University of Kansas where he met my mother.

If you ask my dad what was the best thing that ever happened to him, he will tell you it was the day he met met my mom. And my father does not lie. We should all be so lucky to even know someone as good as my mother!

The day my folks got married, they moved to Syria, and over the course of their life they lived there as well as Iran, Lebanon, Zimbabwe, Mali, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria.

And, of course, they have been everywhere, from Machu Pichu to Japan, from the deepest sands of the Sahara to the waterfalls of Belize and the Fjords of Norway, from nearly every major Cathedral in Europe, to the mosques of Turkey and Old Cairo, to the top of Temple IV in Petan, Guatemala to the cut in the rock known as Petra.

Today, my father and mother live a few blocks from where I work, and only a few miles from my own home, in a house they built themselves in one of the most storied and prestigious neighborhoods in Washington.

Did I mention I have great parents? True!

While my mother will sometimes shake her head and say my brother and I were raised by wolves, in truth we were raised with music, tennis, and horseback riding lessons, and summer trips through Europe in a 1936 Bentley. If we have not turned out better, it is no fault of theirs. In our defense, I will say that the 1970s were rough on my entire generation, and that we all lost a few heat tiles on re-entry.

Appended below two short squibs about my father -- the first from The Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee) and the second from Princeton Alumni Weekly.

Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee) April 24, 2002,
Scholar of Pineville hopes town sees future in its past
by: Morgan Simmons, News-Sentinel staff writer


PINEVILLE, Ky. -- At the north end of Pineville, where U.S. Highway 25E crosses the Cumberland River, David Burns pulled up beside the railroad tracks and parked the car.

For Burns, 73, there was history here, but also memories of himself as a book-obsessed boy growing up dirt-poor in Pineville during the Depression and longing to leave. Along the railroad tracks was an abandoned bakery where Burns' mother made snack cakes for coal miners, and in the near distance stood Pine Mountain, where Burns camped out during his first night as a runaway.

The author of "Gateway: Dr. Thomas Walker and the Opening of Kentucky," Burns lives in Washington D.C., but returned to Pineville recently to talk about the economic future of his hometown, which he believes rests on eco-tourism and historic tourism, not coal.

"When I was a boy, the town filled with miners and their families on weekends," Burns said. "They came to buy dry goods and lard and to swap stories. The streets would be so crowded you could hardly get through, and the sidewalks would be stained brown with tobacco juice.

"With modern mechanization, you can mine without manpower. This town is greatly diminished, as are most coal towns."

Burns said that while Cumberland Gap is deservedly well known as a gateway through the Appalachians, Pineville played an equally critical role during the 1780-through-1810 period of westward expansion.

About 11 miles north of Cumberland Mountain lies Pine Mountain, a parallel ridge with a gap of its own. Called The Narrows, Pine Mountain Gap, or Wasioto (a Shawnee word meaning "land where deer are plentiful"), the gap through Pine Mountain is carved by the Cumberland River and presents a wider, less dramatic opening than its counterpart through Cumberland Mountain.

"Walker didn't even mention it in his journal," Burns said. "Maybe it was just too obvious."

Burns says that after passing through Pine Mountain Gap, the pioneers followed the Wilderness Road to Cumberland Ford, a shoal on the outskirts of Pineville that offered an easy way across the Cumberland River and clear sailing to the Bluegrass region of Kentucky.

"So there were actually three gateways: Cumberland Gap, Pine Mountain Gap and Cumberland Ford," Burns said. "Having all three was the key to opening the West."

In addition to touting Pineville's bragging rights on pioneer history, Burns is also working to bring attention to Blanton Forest, a tract of old-growth forest 35 miles north of Pineville near Harlan, Ky.

Last June, the state, landowners and corporations purchased 2,350 acres of core old-growth and are seeking to protect 4,350 more acres. Burns said that when completed, Blanton Forest will be Kentucky's largest and most diverse nature preserve.

"It's a rare remnant of ancient woods: just the way God made it, and the way Boone and the Longhunters first saw it," Burns said.

Burns said he also supports the creation of Pine Mountain Trail State Park, a proposed 120-mile footpath that would stretch to Cumberland Gap National Historical Park.

He said that while tourism based on outdoor recreation and history isn't a panacea for dwindling coal economies like Pineville's, it's the most promising idea yet to appear on the horizon.

"Towns like Pineville, Harlan and Barbourville have a tough situation," he said. "Eco-tourism and historic tourism aren't the final solution, but they can provide some employment, and we ought to be promoting them.

"They won't bring big incomes, but compared to what? Sitting here and dying, or living off Uncle Sam? These people need work, and they're ready to work."

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February 27, 2002:

Making music
Singer and trombonist Dave Burns '53 resurrects a Golden Age

If singer and trombonist Dave Burns '53 summarized his life in song titles, he'd no doubt choose "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got that Swing)" by Duke Ellington from his new CD Rainbow Room.

Burns has been singing since age two — on the Pineville, Kentucky drugstore counter ("They'd put me on the marble counter at the drugstore and I'd sing songs for a penny."), in church choirs, grade school musicals, Triangle shows, and Air Force combos. For the past 30 years, he's led his own jazz band, Hot Mustard, in Washington, D.C., on some 2,000 gigs.

A retired U.S. foreign-service officer, Burns specializes in American popular songs from 1925 to 1965, including the works of the Gershwin brothers, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin. "When I sing, I'm not out to 'sell' myself but to present the song as convincingly as possible. I'm interested in words and melody," he says.

His background is as colorful as the name of his fourth CD. Burns ran away from Pineville at 15, living a hobo-like existence until landing in D.C., where he dropped out of high school three times before joining the Air Force. A "voracious reader," he realized he'd need a degree after his tour of duty and audaciously applied to Oxford, the University of Kentucky, Occidental College in Pasadena, California — and Princeton.

"I told them if they took a gamble on me I wouldn't disappoint them," he says of Princeton. True to his word, Burns won a Fullbright scholarship and joined the Foreign Service. His older son was born while he served in Beirut; his younger son, in what is now Zimbabwe. And everywhere, Burns made music. He picked up the trombone in Mali.

Burns recently completed volume one of his autobiography — "I don't have any illusions it will sell," he says of Hollored Out, his years from 1928 to 1949 (two more books are planned) — and started composing: "I figure if age knocks the wind out of me I can still make music."

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