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- [S27] The Daily Times, http://www.thedailytimes.com/, (Blount County, Tennessee), 23 Mar 2004.
Historian Burns dies
- [S144] Phone Record.
Name: Kenneth R Burns
Titles and Terms (Original):
Also Known As:
2nd Also Known As Name:
3rd Also Known As Name:
Residence Date: 01 Dec 2002-25 Mar 2008
Residence Place: Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Birth Date: 09 Jan 1971
Phone Number: (608) 242-7351
Phone Number Recorded Date: 25 Mar 2008
Address: 309 S Baldwin St
Address Continued: Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Address Date: 01 Dec 2002-25 Mar 2008
2nd Address: 323 N Blair St # 3
2nd Address Continued: Madison, Wisconsin 53703
2nd Address Date: 30 Dec 2000-01 Nov 2001
3rd Address: 511 Adeles Gdns
3rd Address Continued: Mount Juliet, Tennessee 37122
3rd Address Date: 01 Oct 1989-13 Nov 2000
4th Address:
4th Address Continued:
4th Address Date:
5th Address:
5th Address Continued:
5th Address Date:
6th Address:
6th Address Continued:
6th Address Date:
Possible Relatives: Bonnie G Lachowicz, Gerald R Burns, Ralph M Burns, Sherry R Burns, Steven A Burns
Record Number: 64274355
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 19 Nov 2012.
A wandering Tennessean comes homeKENNETH BURNS
It’s great to be in Tennessee.
In fact, I’m having a hard time remembering why I ever left.
I moved to East Tennessee this past July, when my partner started a teaching job at the University of Tennessee. I spent the previous 13 years in Madison, Wis., and 10 years in Chicago before that.
This fall, I’m proud to join the reporting staff of The Mountain Press. Pleased to meet you.
It’s a homecoming. I’m a Tennessee native – born in Knoxville, raised in Nashville. Like other high school kids I have met, I couldn’t wait to leave my hometown. So after I graduated, I started college in the Windy City.
It’s cold there.
After I graduated, I kicked around for a few years in Chicago. Then I started down an academic career path. I ended up in a graduate program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
It’s cold in Wisconsin, too.
Fortunately, I wasn’t in grad school very long before I decided the academic life wasn’t for me. That’s when my journalism career began.
I spent 10 years writing for the Madison alternative weekly newspaper Isthmus, the last seven as a staffer. Like a lot of alt-weekly journalists, I covered many beats. I wrote about crime, courts and politics, as well as movies, music and food.
Now I’m delighted to be covering beats in Sevier County.
The winters are mild here. I can’t stop thinking about that. I’ve spent a lot of time here already. I have deep roots in Tennessee and the Smokies.
In 1808, my great-great-great-great-great-uncle Peter Brickey established a farm on Wears Valley Road, in what is now Townsend. My dad, who lives in Nashville, owns a chunk of that land. He inherited it from my grandfather Herbert Burns, who was born there in 1912.
Grandfather passed away 10 years ago. His sister Inez Burns was an educator, historian and preservationist in Maryville. A stretch of Wears Valley Road is named for her. I’m proud of her. We called her Bab. Grandfather and Bab’s mother, Nancy Brickey, was born on the farm in 1879.
My oldest ancestor here was my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather John Brickey. A Huguenot, he came from Virginia to settle in the Townsend area. He lived from 1740 to 1807.
A few years ago, I took a picture of his gravestone, which is in Townsend’s Myers Cemetery. The hair stood up on my neck. The U.S. is pretty young, as nations go, and I’m amazed and humbled when I think about how long my family has been here.
My East Tennessee memories don’t quite go back to 1807. I have many happy recollections of visiting my mom’s parents in Maryville, and my dad’s on the Brickey farm.
That farm is a wonderland for a kid. There are hills and streams. Rocks to climb on. I caught frogs. Grandmother rang a bell to call for supper, and supper meant vegetables my grandfather grew in his garden. Okra. Crowder peas.
The farm wasn’t the only wonderland. I also liked spending time in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park – though I didn’t truly appreciate that incredible place until I got much older and began exploring its trails.
Guess what was the true wonderland for a kid visiting retired grandparents in Townsend?
Sevier County.
My brother and I begged to be taken to Pigeon Forge. Again and again. We couldn’t get enough.
We loved Dollywood when it was Silver Dollar City. I still hum the song from the flooded-mine ride. One day on the train ride, actors playing bandits playfully heaped verbal abuse on my grandmother. She heaped it right back. I was impressed.
I grew up near the old Opryland theme park in Nashville, and as a result I considered myself a connoisseur of theme parks. Silver Dollar City and, later, Dollywood ranked right up there. As did Magic World. Memories of the flying saucer ride there haunt me.
It’s wonderful to be back and see sites I remember. And to see how Sevier County has changed. Wow, how it has changed.
One thing hasn’t changed. During my time in the Upper Midwest, which I now think of as the wandering years, I missed Southern friendliness, Southern graciousness. Midwestern friends said I was dreaming. Midwesterners are too friendly, they said.
I have been back for a little while, and I am happy to report: Southern friendliness is real. People smile. They hold doors. They make eye contact. Would you believe Midwesterners aren’t always so good at eye contact? I’m looking forward to meeting you, and making eye contact with you, as I report Sevier County’s news.
— Kenneth Burns is a reporter for The Mountain Press. Call 428-0748, ext. 214 or e-mail kburns@themountainpress.com.
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 1 Mar 2014.
Kenneth Burns: You can't beat biking to work
You might remember reading in an earlier column that two years ago, I moved back home to Tennessee after 13 years in Madison, Wis.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Wisconsin lately. That’s because Wisconsin, the land of truly rotten winters, has been having an especially brutal one. I don’t miss Wisconsin winters.
Do you know what I miss about Wisconsin, though? The bicycling.
More precisely, I miss not depending on my car so much. There is a fine public transportation system in Madison, and when the weather was lousy, I took the bus to my job downtown. In Madison, lots of people ride the bus.
And when the weather wasn’t lousy, I biked. That was great.
Madison has a robust bicycling infrastructure. Many streets have bike lanes. Dedicated bike paths crisscross the city, and the system is constantly being expanded.
Last year, workers completed a major bike-and-pedestrian bridge over the the Beltline, Madison’s main freeway. It lets people bicycle from southern parts of the city all the way downtown. That’s wonderful. What’s also wonderful is that it’s not the first major bike-and-pedestrian bridge over the Beltline.
For much of the time I lived in Madison, my commute was a 25-minute bike ride, mainly on one of the dedicated paths. I loved it. Compared to driving, biking to work is peaceful and stress-free.
Well, nearly stress-free. Sometimes there were unfriendly interactions. A few of those were with drivers. Madison cyclists and drivers generally get along okay, but there can be hostility.
Part of that owes to drivers who are unwilling to, as the bumper sticker says, share the road – with bicyclists.
But Madison bicyclists bring a lot of trouble on themselves. For reasons I’ve never understood, there is an element of lawlessness to bicycling culture, and not just in Madison.
Bicyclists routinely flout traffic laws. They go the wrong way on one-way streets. Especially, they run stoplights and stop signs.
At their peril. I lived half a block from a street that’s an important Madison bike route, and one day I heard a commotion outside. I learned that a bicyclist ran a stop sign and got hit by a car. He died soon after.
I saw him lying on the street. That was sobering.
Many of my most stressful interactions on the bike paths didn’t involve cars at all. Sometimes a Madison cyclist’s worst enemies are – other Madison cyclists.
That’s because not everyone bicycles for the same reason. There are commuters, recreational bicyclists, fitness enthusiasts.
I was mainly a commuter. A geeky commuter. I had a cheap bike from Target. I attached a milk crate to it for hauling stuff. I strapped my pants cuffs down so they didn’t get caught in the bike chain.
On the path, I rode briskly. I knew the rules of the road, and I followed them.
Recreational bicyclists didn’t always know the rules. Often they were out in family groups, moving slowly down the path, weaving back and forth. Cute kids in bike helmets. That sort of thing.
Then there were the fitness enthusiasts. They wore Lycra and screamed down the bike path. Literally. I literally have seen a grown man in Lycra screaming at a 4-year-old on a bike with training wheels, because she got in his way.
Different kinds of people, different kinds of cycling. Of course there was friction.
It didn’t bother me. I relished the glorious bicycling in Madison – and all over Wisconsin, thanks to the terrific statewide system of bike trails. Mostly converted railroad right-of-ways, these let you pedal along for miles and miles through the countryside. It’s like hiking, but faster.
Now I drive to work. My commute to The Mountain Press takes me down Chapman Highway, and there’s no way I’m biking on that busy road.
I do see cyclists around, though. Especially in Knoxville, where the bike infrastructure actually is pretty good.
I still have my bike from Target. Sometimes I get it out and ride around on side streets.
I hope there is more bike commuting in my future.
Kenneth Burns is Community News Editor of The Mountain Press. Call 428-0748, ext. 212, or send email to kburns@themountainpress.com. Twitter: @KennethBurns.
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1971 - (53 years)