Laura McNeil Burns

On March 6, 2010, Linda Little Strickland sent a link to a powerpoint about Galveston. That link is found on Linda's bio page. In response to my request of Laura (who lives in Galveston) she sent this photo of her lovely old home, and the following message that relates to items in the powerpoint. "The Borden Oak survived Ike, I am glad to say, although many trees did not. My friend's tree that was listed in the Handbook of Texas as the largest magnolia in Texas did not survive the storm. Also, the trolleys are not running again yet, thanks to Ike also. Here is my house, which is an L-shaped folk Victorian. L-shaped Victorians are usually (though obviously not always) one-story." You may remember reading about the devastation Laura's home experienced from Hurrican Ike, and how she and her husband accomplished the clean-up and restoration process. An update to that story is found in her March 2010 comment at the bottom of this page

October 6, 2007
Original Bio Info

While I was anxiously awaiting some biographical information from Laura, I compiled the following out of bits and pieces from the blog:

Laura has been a frequent participant in this blog, and her comments have added both wit and interesting information – some in answer to questions from others, some from her own memories and interests. I did a little detective work - searching the blog comments and looking through her personal e-mail to me to see…

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT LAURA MCNEIL BURNS FROM HER COMMENTS?

Clearly she likes to search the internet – her pursuit of trivia is both prodigious and provocative!
She likes to garden.
She has a GREAT memory!!!
She writes professionally.
She has kept up with the “long ago” while pursuing the “here and now”.
She is witty and clever as well as a deep thinker and philosopher.
She lived in Round Rock when her sons were in school.
One son is a math teacher today.

Here’s a portion of one of my favorite comments from Laura:
"At one time I belonged to an informal gathering of women, mostly writers, who spent a yearly weekend together. After some reminiscing, most of us being of a certain age, we called this event the Mouton Hunt. And we all found old moutons in thrift shops and elsewhere and began wearing them on our February weekends in Wimberly, Texas. Who knows, maybe some Milby girl’s former pride and joy made its way there, and I saw it for a second time in my life?"

OK, Laura – now fill in the blanks of your life!!!

Thus ended Laura's original biography page. Fortunately Laura rose to my challenge, and what follows is a quite interesting account of her life and her career in writing.

Laura's submission:
OK here is a biographical sketch, since there is popular demand for it. (Well, Karla asked for it. And in high school, she was popular.)

After graduating from Milby, like my mother and two of my cousins before me, I went to the University of Texas. I met my first husband there. We moved to San Antonio, where he was a psychologist at the State Hospital and I was assistant editor of a journal, Applied Mechanics Review. It is for mechanical engineers, and I was surprised to be able to notice the dangling participles in sentences the content of which I could not understand at all, my job being basically copy editing.

Fred Burns, my husband, got a job opportunity to work at a children’s home in Calgary Alberta, so we moved up to Canada in 1969. We met a number of draft dodgers who were up there also. I had my two children there, and really like the Canadian medical system. However, the alleged niceness of Canadians seems rather a hype to me, though of course there are some wonderful people up there.

My marriage began falling apart and we ended up in a knockdown, drag-out custody battle which was written up (somewhat inaccurately) in a Canadian legal journal. This is not the way you want to get your 15 minutes of fame, trust me. It was very painful and took more than a year, and nine shrinks testified at the custody hearing. Anyway, I returned to Texas in the late 1970s with my younger son. I first stayed with my sister in Austin, then rented a room in the house of my friend Susan Lee. (Susan was later to change her name to Susan Lee Solar and run for governor of Texas with the slogan “Solar Power,” against George W. Bush, who, as you may know, won that election.) I was spending the time freelance writing while looking for a job. Being a freelance writer is precarious, which I didn’t mind except for having a small child. He would sometimes pull out his toy typewriter and begin pounding on it, saying, “I need money. I have to write an article,” so you can see what he saw around him.

One of the temporary gigs I got at this time was filling in for the managing editor of the Round Rock Leader, a semi-weekly newspaper in a town north of Austin. The managing editor, John Koloen, returned from his vacation after two weeks, but I stayed there several more weeks, filling in for a reporter who was having major surgery. Then I was on my own, hustling around for articles to write again. If I had known being a writer was mostly a sales job, it would never have looked so attractive to me when I was young. But one good thing -- now that he was not supervising me, John could date me.

Finally I got a real job, as copy editor on the Midland Reporter-Telegram. I moved out to Midland, but only stayed there six months. John missed me too much, and vice versa. So I came back to Austin and we moved in together. We bought a house near Round Rock, and soon I had a real job in Austin, which paid better than the one in Midland. I became an information specialist for the Texas Commission on Alcoholism. I wrote press releases, organized press conferences and informational campaigns, and edited the agency magazine. The magazine got noticed in articles in the Houston Chronicle and Texas Monthly, because for a state publication, it was remarkably unstodgy.

My older son came to live with us when he was nine, so I had a complete family again. Someone from Milby whom I reconnected with during this time was Marinell Catron Timmons, who was often at the same legislative hearings as I was, for the sad reason that her son had been killed by a drunk driver, and she was, at the time, the Texas director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

We were both getting restive in our jobs, so decided to start a business on our own. First it was a sideline, then I, and later John, went to work full time on our magazine, MICROpendium, which was dedicated to the TI99/4A computer. Texas Instruments stopped manufacturing the computer right before we got the magazine off the ground, but we took the chance and went on with it. The magazine stayed in publication 13 more years, as users of the computer independently developed hardware and software for it. During this time, we also became partners with others in founding a community newspaper, the Lake Travis View. We also founded another magazine, Austin Health & Fitness (not related to the Houston magazine chain) which for five years was the largest circulation monthly publication in the greater Austin area.

Our partners wanted to get out of the View, and our other partners got out of Austin Health and Fitness, so they were sold. The Lake Travis View now is owned by Cox Communications, publisher of the Austin American-Statesman, as is the Round Rock Leader, for that matter. Independent community publications seem to be a thing of the past, as even these little weeklies are gobbled up by mega-corporations.

I began freelance writing and editing along with other odd jobs. John went to work at the Texas Department of Health. He enjoyed it up until a few years ago, when the state of Texas began merging and privatizing services, and he (a manager) was told to make a plan to fire half his staff. Finally, he was laid off himself. He got another job there, but he and I had both applied for a media relations job at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. We both made the cut for an interview; he was one of the two finalists and got the job.

So now we live in a 94-year-old house in Galveston. I do a lot of writing, mostly anonymous, but also have a part-time job as a test proctor at Galveston College. Cheating has gone rather high-tech since our school days, but for traditionalists, there is still such a thing as the old-fashioned crib sheet. This is all probably more than anyone wanted to know about me, so I’ll close.

Please take the time now to make a comment in response to Laura's biography. You will also enjoy reading the comments that others have left.

Comments

[Laura Burns]

Our house is now 97 years old since I wrote this, and the downstairs is all remodeled with nice new appliances since Ike. I quit my retirement job at Galveston College and have no trouble finding things to do with my spare time, including taking classes through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (classes designed especially for geezers).