Reference Point

Author and scholar Betsy Hearne captivates crowd Professor Elizabeth ���Betsy��� Hearne, an internationally recognized scholar of children���s literature and author of several children���s books, captivated listeners as she presented, ���Children���s Books, Oral Lore, and the Playful Imagination.��� A telling story Burgess endowment celebrates children and storytelling Eunice Sutherland Burgess is like every other person who enjoys fishing; she has great stories to tell. As the 1949 graduate quickly jumps from tales of ice fishing on Higgins Lake to describing her custom handmade fly rod, she pauses and sheepishly smiles. ���You know, my mother permitted us to skip school on the first day of trout fishing each spring,��� says Burgess, the third of eight children in her family that lived in LeRoy just north of Reed City, Mich. ���We usually started in February planning our lunch for that day.��� From fishing and beyond, Burgess is a self-professed fan of storytelling, and she proudly praises the greatest storyteller she ever heard: her father, James Monroe Sutherland. ���I grew up on stories from my dad. Paul Bunyan stories were my favorites,��� Burgess says as she recalls sitting around the kitchen with her siblings for story time. ���With a pan of popcorn and Paul Bunyan stories, we were happy kids.��� This passion for storytelling led her to establish the David M. and Eunice Sutherland Burgess Library Endowment in Clarke Historical Library. The endowment supports bringing authors, scholars and storytellers to the library who focus on the enduring art of story. This will provide generations of CMU students, faculty, staff and community members opportunities to engage with experts on the important role of story, primarily in children���s literature. Burgess says children are a primary audience for storytelling, and they were at the heart of her lifetime profession. After earning her degree in psychology at Central, she began working for what then was the Bureau of Social Aid and focused on child welfare programs. ���Children were always part of what I did,��� Burgess says. In 1952 she married David Burgess, who worked with Sun Oil Co. and soon was transferred with the company to work in Texas. A second transfer moved the couple to Indiana, which provided her the opportunity to work in the child guidance clinic and pursue and complete her Master of Social Work degree at the University of Louisville. A final Sun Oil transfer brought the Burgesses back to Mount Pleasant, and Eunice began working for the state of Michigan managing child welfare cases in Mount Pleasant and the surrounding districts. She took over as a youth services director ��� she was the only female director within the district ��� and retired after serving the state for more than 26 years. While she and her husband of 60 years, who died in 2009, never had children of their own, Burgess says she understands the importance of establishing solid upbringings for all boys and girls. Hearne���s presentation was the first David M. and Eunice Sutherland Burgess lecture, made possible by a generous endowed gift from CMU alumna Eunice Burgess, ���49. Hearne spoke about the large number of children���s stories that include an element of risk, giving children a way to work through their own fears as they are immersed emotionally in the story. Her crisp storytelling and views about children���s books made the evening lighthearted and memorable, Director of Clarke Historical Library Frank Boles says. ���It provided CMU a unique set of insights,��� he says. ���She just understands children���s literature and can write it in a way that interests children.��� Gretchen Papazian, associate professor of English Language and Literature, says Hearne exposed the importance of an aspect in stories that causes people to make sense of the world around them ��� an element often forgotten. ���My students were blown-away by her presentation,��� she says. ���They all picked up on different things that mean something to them.��� Hearne is former director of The Center for Children���s Books and a professor emerita in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she taught children���s literature and storytelling for many years. She has reviewed books for more than 35 years and contributes to the New York Times Book Review. �� And she knows from her own experiences as a child the impact a great story can have in shaping children���s ideas, imagination and goals. �� 7

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