Rheta Grimsley Johnson
He was a war hero, but we didn't know it
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We thought he was wise, but ancient. When I had my first journalism class under Professor P.C. "Cliff" Burnett at Auburn University, he would have been a year older than I am right now, 53.
Ancient.
He set a formal tone in his classroom, putting a courtesy title before our surnames, as in "Miss Grimsley, I'm glad to see you made it to Feature Writing today."
He usually stood behind a lectern, except when he'd slowly back up to the classroom's door facing and methodically scratch his back, continuing all the while to hold forth on Speed Graphic cameras and the tricky art of magazine freelance.
By the time I was at Auburn, Mr. Burnett single-handedly had taken the school's journalism program from one classroom with one instructor, a foster child under the department of English, to a department all its own.
But still it was a small department, with only Mr. Burnett and Mickey Logue and — a recent addition — David Housel teaching all the classes. So you got the same professors, and thus their same stories, several times over in the course of your journalism education.
Mr. Burnett, a Marshall, Texas, native, had come to Auburn in 1948. By the time I met him in 1972, how tired he must have been of ignorant, self-absorbed kids. That's what we were, really, cocky kids, sure that The New York Times was keeping a seat warm until we passed History and Principles. We never thought to ask much about the modest, amazing man standing before us.
I have learned more about him since — when he retired in 1979 with 7,200 names on his class roll books, and, last week, from his obituary.
Mr. Burnett began his journalism career at the Marshall High School Parrot, the same paper where a next-door neighbor of the Burnetts, Bill Moyers, would later get his start.
After college he wanted to buy a weekly newspaper in Louisiana. Pearl Harbor changed his plans. Mr. Burnett joined the Army Air Corps and was assigned to the 91st Bomb Group as a B-17 navigator. In 1942, German aircraft fire hit his plane.
Cliff Burnett was seriously wounded, but somehow, without charts or a radio, he guided his lame bomber over the Channel to a safe landing in England. For that derring-do, he was awarded the Purple Heart and other medals, featured in Esquire and interviewed on the BBC by Kate Smith.
Professor Burnett taught me feature writing, photojournalism and a class I dearly loved called "Community Newspaper."
He said something in that class that shaped not only my professional life, but my entire life. I remember the day he said it, and how astounding it was to hear.
"All you need to start a weekly newspaper," he said, "is a typewriter."
I didn't even wait till graduation to see if it was true. In 1975, along with a couple of other fledglings from Auburn, I packed a manual typewriter and some borrowed typesetting equipment in a U-Haul, and we set off to start our own weekly newspaper on St. Simons Island, Ga.
It lasted only 26 issues, but, then, Mr. Burnett hadn't said what it took to make the newspaper last. Or maybe I just hadn't been listening.
With that single professional adventure I learned my strengths, my weaknesses and the fine art of filling a startlingly blank page. Early on, I learned about failure.
With the skills Mr. Burnett had given me, I got up, dusted off, packed the Pinto and started over, eventually finding my journalistic niche.
Through the years, I could laugh with some authority at big-city newspaper types who dreamed of retiring from the rat race and running a weekly as a retirement hobby. I knew firsthand what demanding, gut-wrenching hard work it was.
It is no exaggeration to say I loved Mr. Burnett. I don't know what might have become of me if I hadn't found a way to make a living with a keyboard and an abiding fascination with words.
He was 86 when he died last week. Thousands of us owe him.
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