Jun. 23—SIOUX FALLS — My favorite line from ‘The Great Burns’, Stu Whitney’s new biography of legendary football coach and war hero Bob Burns comes on page 64.
Burns liked to say that the first time he rode in an airplane, he jumped out of it.
Whether Bob Burns is a complete unknown to you, or whether you’re a South Dakota sports junkie well familiar with Burns’ story, that line sums up well what you’re in for in Whitney’s meticulously researched and cinematically written
300-page book
.
Burns built the O’Gorman football dynasty, yes. He coached the last Augustana Vikings team to win the North Central Conference, yes. He founded the Dakota Bowl, brought the Minnesota Vikings and Dallas Cowboys to Sioux Falls for an exhibition game, yes.
But much of that feels ancillary to who Burns was as a man, as an American, and the line about Burns jumping out of the first plane he ever rode in not only sheds light on Burns’ heroic (and I’m not using that word lightly, here) military career, but also the gruff edge and masculine sense of humor that characterized a truly larger-than-life figure.
Burns died a quarter century ago, in 2000, at the age of 80. Whitney, who spent more than 30 years as a lightning-rod sports reporter and columnist at the Argus Leader back when it was a thriving newspaper, spent a good chunk of that time covering the Knights closely, and one of his most memorable pieces was a (very) long 1996 feature on Burns that served as something of a mini-biography.
After reading it, Burns (half) jokingly suggested that Stu write a book about his life, and, after Whitney completed his first book, the fast-paced and entertaining novel ‘The Covid Chronicles’ in 2021, he turned his attention to Burns.
Now, full disclosure, Stu was my colleague for 20 years, my boss for more than 10 and one of my sportswriting idols before I ever met him, so I guess I can’t say my review of ‘The Great Burns’ is entirely objective.
That said, one thing that made Stu and I something of kindred spirits when we worked together was our shared admiration and penchant for brutal honesty, even with people we care about.
It was with that in mind that when Stu and I had lunch together last week to discuss the book, and I was only about 20 pages into it, I admitted to him that I found the first couple chapters a little slow.
“OK, so Joseph Burns (Bob’s father) was good at checkers,” I chided. “Can we get to the war and football stuff?”
Fortunately, prospective reader, Stu gets to the war and football stuff soon enough, and ‘The Great Burns’ quickly unfolds into an almost hard to believe, yes-this-really-happened account of an extraordinary life.
As the late John Simko, himself a Hall-of-Fame athlete turned US Magistrate Judge said: “A guy like Bob Burns comes around once in a lifetime. Or maybe more rarely than that.”
Indeed, just a quick sketch of Burns’ highlights reads like a checklist of many men’s lofty life goals, of which they’d be thrilled to accomplish half.
Married the prettiest girl in school (photos can attest).
Boxing champion.
Star quarterback.
Jumped out of airplanes.
Endured bloody combat in the Army.
Literally coined the ‘Screaming Eagles’ nickname of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army, which was founded in 1918, for which Burns served in World War II and which is still active today.
Fought on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge.
Killed Nazis.
Returned home as a hero.
Became a high school football coaching legend.
Successful college football coach.
Came out of retirement to add to coaching legend.
Buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Whitney interviewed more than 80 subjects for the book, and leaned on support and access to family documents from the Burns family, particularly Bob’s grandson, Patrick Burns, who accompanied Stu on a trip to Europe to visit the sites of some of Bob Burns’ dramatic encounters.
Whitney’s retelling of the battles in which Burns fought are the highlight of the book. He writes them with a dramatic flair similar to his best work as a sportswriter, putting the reader in the trenches with Burns and his companymen.
Burns found himself in harrowing scenarios where men died by the dozens right next to him. Whitney doesn’t shy away from the terror that must have accompanied these missions, but he doesn’t overdo it, either, and skillfully conveys the bravery with which the men of that era faced their fates.
In a letter home to his mother midway through the war, Burns claims to have personally killed 15 Germans, including one whom he dispatched with a knife in hand-to-hand combat, fulfilling a promise to his father and growling ‘This one’s for the old man!’ as he plunged his blade into the enemy.
Whitney doesn’t linger on these details too long or speculate on their authenticity, but what’s known is that Burns was nothing short of a hero (earning the Purple Heart and the Silver Star) in one of the most important and consequential conflicts in human history, so if he did embellish some of the details who’s to deny him the right?
But ‘The Great Burns’ isn’t just a war book. Sports were always close to Burns’ heart and on his mind even when he was fighting overseas (he organized boxing matches and football and basketball games with the Army), and Whitney successfully weaves those nuggets into the war stories. Then, when Burns returns home for good and begins his post-military career, the book transitions seamlessly into an illuminating look at South Dakota’s football history — from the NCC to the Coyotes and Vikings, to the Washington Warriors dynasty to the dawn of the high school football playoffs to O’Gorman’s rise from struggling program to ‘parochial powerhouse’.
The stakes were obviously nowhere near what they were when Burns was serving his country, but he approached his second career with the same brute force, and the stories are nearly as compelling.
I asked Stu if he thought there was an audience for a book about Bob Burns in 2026. After all, I’m one of the few people from my own generation who remember him, and now I’m old. Who reads books anymore, anyway?
But as we mulled over the state of journalism and the dwindling number of folks in this state who even remember the NCC, we came to a realization.
The last living veterans of World War II won’t be with us much longer. And while films like ‘Saving Private Ryan’, ‘The Thin Red Line’, and ‘Patton’ will surely endure for decades, the further into the past they fade the less real they’ll seem.
Telling stories about people like Bob Burns puts a local, human face on the war, and brings world history home to South Dakota.
I can only imagine how ‘The Great Burns’ might read to someone who’s 24 years old today, who never met and never will meet someone who fought in a World War; who only knows the Nazis as Hollywood monsters, not real people who almost took over the world, and who met their match on the battlefield in an undersized but determined football fanatic from South Dakota.
Would it seem far-fetched? Terrifying? Sad? Heroic?
Maybe Bob Burns’ story is a little bit of all of those things. That’s why it’s so important that it be told.
While available on Amazon, ‘The Great Burns’ official book launch is set for Thursday at the Belbas Theater in the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, where Whitney will be selling and signing copies.
The program begins at 6:30 p.m. with a cocktail reception at 5:30.
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