The star-independent. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1904-1917, 1914-11-20
BOB BURDETTE. AUTHOR.
dies AT PASADENA. CAL.
Native of Pennsylvania Who Made the
World Laugh as the Burlington
Hawkeye Man" Suceumbs in His
Seventy-first Year

Pasadena. Cal. Nov. 20-Dr. Rob-
ert j. Burdette, preacher, author and
humorist, died at his home here at ?
clock yesterday afternoon, in the
seventy-frst year of his age. He had
been ill for the greater part Of two
years. and for the last week had been
in a state of coma.
Robert Jones Burdette, humorist, lee
turer, newspaper man and minister of
the Gospel, was born in Greensboro,
Pa, July 80, 1874. He was the son of
Frederick E. and Sophia L. j. Burdette.
His parents removed to Peoria, ILL.,,
when he was boy, and he was educat-
ed in the public schools of that city.
In later life he received a number of
honorary degrees, among them being
ID. D., from Kalamazoo College, and
LIZ D., from Occidental College. Cali
fornia. In 1862, when he was Is years
old. he enlisted in the 4Tth Illinois In
fautry and served until the end of the
war.
He began his lecture tours in 1876,
and since that time lectured all over
the United States. His tours ceased
when he accepted the pastorate of
Temple Baptist church, in Los Angeles,
in 1908. He was ordained Baptist
minister in 1908, and in 1903 became
pastor emeritus of the same church.
Robert J. Burdette began cultivating
gooi humor obscrely in Peoria. H.,
forty years ago, when he spent part of
his days at q desk on the Peoria
Transcript trying to think as
he himself once related, "of pleasant
things to tell the folks when | went
home at night" His audience of
"folks' then was Carrie Garrett, the
Peoria girl he had married a short time
before, while she lay supposedly on her
death-bed, but who lived and though
an invalid for life, became immortalizel
by her husband as ''Her Little Serene
Happiness 1t was she who encouraged
him to sow his humor in wider fields
At her bedside Burdette became pro-
/ life with fun making contributions to
the Burlington, Ia, Hawkeye, and
I through these he became famous the
country over as The Burlington
( Hawkeye Man.
! Although Burdettes $ original home
was in Greensboro, Pa, where he was
| born in 1914, the later part of his life
was spent in California. At Sunnyrest,
/ Pasadena, he had a spacious house. His
/ first wife had died after Is years of
encouragement TO him. In 1899 he mar
/ ried Mrs. Clara B. Baker, OF Pasadena.
! A fugitive instance of Burdette s roll
/ licking humor was letter home to his
/ flock in Los Angeles during his first
! trip to Europe. He dated the letter
from ''sOme distance out in the damp, -
and said, in part:
The scenery along this route. al
though somewhat monotonous, is splen-
didly irrigated. But it seems too early
for the growing crops. Nothing has
I come up yet. except on shipboard, and
that has gone overheard. The route is
not nearly so popuous as the Sante Fe
trail over the desert. We have just two
kinds of days-the days we see a ship
and the days we don T..
The veteran humorist found fun in
everything. While he was forced to
abandon it in the pulpit largely because
of the reputation he had made for fun
making, he agreed with Henry Ward
Beecher that a joke in the pulpit was
not at all out of place. It was, as
Beecher said, "When you are fighting
the devil, shoot him with anything"
Burdette died with the conviction
that there was not only just as much
fun in the world to-day as ever, but
"a great deal more, because" as he
said, "there are more people in it, and
people are the funniest things on this
side of the grave