Ben Burns used to tell students in his feature writing classes to write descriptively enough to ?make me see,? quoting the advice given to Philadelphia Inquirer editor Gene Roberts as a young reporter by a blind editor.
In his role as educator, friend and mentor, Burns taught others how to see in more ways than one: how to write and think like journalists, how to boost others to success and how, in the end, to meet death with dignity.
Family, friends, colleagues and students lost a beloved figure after Burns, head of the WSU journalism program, lost his battle with acute myeloid leukemia Sept. 7. He was 72.
Diagnosed with a rare blood disorder in 1997, Burns decided to forgo treatment after recent tests showed the disease had progressed into leukemia. He was in hospice care for a few days before he went home to be with his family.
Burns shared his final messages on a website giving updates to family, friends and associates.
?I want to be with my family, at home, away from a hospital full of sick people,? he wrote Sept. 4. ?I am not sick, I am dying. But I?m not leaving in a body riddled with chemo. I will be surrounded by the people, and the dogs, I love.?
Burns passed away at about 11:45 a.m. in his Grosse Pointe home surrounded by his family and dogs, just as he wanted.
Burns, who grew up on a dairy farm in Memphis, Mich., had been the head of the university?s journalism program since 1993 and spent more than 30 years in the newspaper business, serving as the executive editor and chief administrative editor of The Detroit News and the editor and publisher of The Macomb Daily and The Daily Tribune in Royal Oak. According to the Detroit Free Press, Burns worked with 33 daily and weekly newspapers throughout his career.
While at WSU, Burns taught feature writing and magazine writing, among other courses.
Burns was a member of the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame and the Michigan State News Alumni Hall of Fame. He also served as the president of the Michigan Historical Society, vice president of the Detroit Historical Society and president of the Detroit chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, among numerous other positions.
?Ben was not just a tall man, having been all-state center on his high school team in Memphis, Mich., but he also was a very tall man in thought and deed,? wrote AP Michigan elections coordinator Hank Ackerman in an email. Burns was ?(a) journalist, teacher, mentor, website builder, author, editor, churchman (and) community leader influencing thousands of readers and students.?
Burns co-authored ?Michigan Media Law: A Newsroom Guide? and wrote ?The Flying Firsts of Walter Hinton, From the First Transatlantic Flight to the Arctic and the Amazon.? He was also the founding editor and partner of GrossePointeToday.com.
He was ?very interested in nurturing people and helping people develop,? said WSU journalism professor Jack Lessenberry, who first met Burns as a graduate student in the late 1970s.
Burns graduated from Michigan State University, where he was the editor of the student newspaper and earned both his master?s and bachelor?s degrees. He also graduated from the University of Michigan?s Executive Business Program.
He was awarded a Ford Foundation grant through the American Political Science Association in 1972 and was an American Society of Newspaper Editors Institute for Excellence fellow. Burns served as a judge for several journalism writing contests and was a Pulitzer juror.
After working for the Evening News Association ? the parent company of The Detroit News before it was bought by Gannett in 1986 ? for more than a decade, Burns became the head of the journalism department at Wayne State.
Arguably his greatest legacy at WSU is his work in creating what was then called the Journalism Institute for Minorities in 1984, now the Journalism Institute for Media Diversity.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were few women or minorities in newsrooms, Lessenberry said.
?(Burns) thought?he needed to address it by educating more minorities to make the newsrooms of America more like America,? he said.
The program sets rigorous requirements for students to complete, such as doing an internship each semester and maintaining academic standards, in exchange for scholarship money so that graduates are among the most competitive candidates for media employment.
?Hundreds of students have come through this, benefit from it and are now working journalists, myself included,? said Carolyn Chin, JIM graduate and former editor-in-chief of The South End. ?Without the Institute, who knows where many of the people would be today??
Burns was a man who could problem-solve without becoming caught up in the heat of the moment, colleagues recalled.
?Sometimes, it was just talking to him, and he?d just ask a question, and it would kind of all just fall into place,? said Suzanne Fleming, WSU adjunct journalism professor and former faculty advisor for The South End.
At the same time, she said, he could lay down the hammer when the situation called for it.
?He was someone I would say did not suffer fools, and I always admired that about him,? Fleming said. ?I would not have wanted to have been a young reporter having to go into his office (for) making the same stupid mistake twice.?
Burns instituted a required grammar class in the journalism curriculum at a time when elementary and high schools started to focus less and less on grammar, Fleming said.
?He was very clear in his vision and his directives,? she said. ?He had a set of expectations for students, and they were high.?
Former A&E editor for The South End and WSU journalism graduate Alan Burdziak took a feature writing taught by Burns.
?He was one of the smartest people I ever met, and his reputation preceded him,? he said. ?Knowing what he had done in his career, all of us who studied under him realized what an opportunity it was to learn from one of the area?s best journalists.?
Colleagues also remembered his warmth and concern for others.
?He had a marvelous laugh,? Fleming said. ?His eyes literally would kind of twinkle, and his shoulders would be engaged, and he just defined the word ?mirth? when he would laugh.?
After Fleming sustained injuries during an accident, Burns drove her to and from work every day for the duration of the semester.
?Ben was a person who got into your heart,? said Alicia Nails, WSU journalism professor and current JIM director. ?He was more than a boss; he was a true friend.?
He was married to his wife, Beverly, whom he met at the Lansing State Journal, where both of them were editors at the time, for 38 years. He had four children: Blakely, Bethany, Ben and James. Burns also had six grandchildren ? Emma, Rachel, Grace, Mia, Marian and Benjamin Joseph ? with another one on the way, according to son James Burns.
?He coached my brother and me in youth leagues for basketball and baseball for years. Additionally, we?d go on annual fishing trips, as fishing was something we all loved,? James Burns wrote in an email. ?I can?t remember a single game of mine he ever missed while I was in high school while I played basketball and football for all (four) years, and the same was true for my brother.?
Burns also was a dog-lover, he son said, and he trained one to become a therapy dog.
Death can be hard concept to accept, but Burns regarded his final days with peace, Fleming said.
?A week ago, I had a long and terrific chat with him,? she said. ?He said that he had checked off just about everything from his bucket list.?
His legacy is one of being a loving father and husband, as well as a teacher intent on showing co-workers and young reporters alike how to live up to the ideals of journalism.
?When you?ve achieved a lot in your life, there?s not a need to put other people down,? Nails said. ?You instead want to lift other people up, and that?s the spirit that Ben Burns lived every day with.?
The funeral will be held Sept. 11 at 2 p.m. at Grosse Pointe Memorial Presbyterian Church, 16 Lakeshore Dr., Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich. There will be a reception afterward at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial. The family asks that anyone wishing to make a donation in his memory do so to JIM. See sidebar for more information.
Jordan Vitick contributed to this report.
Source: http://thesouthend.wayne.edu/article/2012/09/ben-burns-taught-students-colleagues-how-to-see
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