Amherst Magazine George B. Burnett III

Deceased September 12, 2000

View alumni profile (log in required)

In Memory

George Burnett probably will not be remembered by his Phi Delt fraternity brothers, or by any of his other friends, as “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” His passing on September 12, 2000, from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) almost guarantees it, given the awfulness of the disease.

Most of us think of “the luckiest …,” of course, as New York Yankees Hall-of-Famer Lou Gehrig, who made that statement about himself before a sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1939, when he tearfully announced his retirement from baseball because he was dying of ALS.

David Stringer ’64 announced George’s death in the class notes. My role in this sad saga is to tell you how I remember George, and in so doing, to put the case to you that George was perhaps just as much the  “luckiest man ...” as Columbia Lou.

I was one of George’s Phi Delt brothers, and I guess I knew him as well as, if not somewhat better than, most of us who lived in the house for three years. (George lived in the dorms.) George and I never were best friends, because at Amherst in those days, it was almost impossible for dorm-dwelling fraternity brothers to share fully in the “gemeinschaft” of the house-dwellers.

I liked George immensely and always made sure that I stopped to chat with him for a while whenever I ran into him on campus or in the house. As most of you will recall, George was unremittingly quiet and reserved. To those of us who knew him more than in just passing, however, he also was gracious, gentle, funny, and kind. I was none of those things but desperately wanted to be. So during the occasions when George joined us for dinner at the Phi Delt table at Valentine, I watched and listened to him with great interest. George was naturally preppy; to the manner born, as it were. He personified the clean-cut, scrubbed and pressed look that many of us tried to emulate in those quiet days before drugs, protests, bad manners, and long hair became “in.” Think Kingston Trio, not Kingsmen.

That is not to say that George did not know how to rock. He frequently colonized Phi Delt’s basement bar (you may recall the sign over the steps down into it: “Facile Decensus Averno”) for weekend taps and house parties. He was easy to spot, standing next to the jukebox holding a beer in an Amherst paper cup, silent, not moving, and smiling faintly at the dancers and drunks in that curiously paternal way that he had. His dates, when he had them, were for the most part female George counterparts—pleated tartan skirts, McMullen collar blouses, circle pins, and very quiet.

The trait that most personified George was his kindness. His usual response to our sometimes-cruel Valentine dinnertime criticisms of each other, and others, was a rueful smile and a sad sigh. He never joined in the taking of pot shots. His humor frequently showed up, however. I remember particularly his response to an unusually nasty comment on a rushing candidate: “If you guys would pay more attention to ‘the whole turkey’ rather than its parts, you’d wind up with more legs and fewer gizzards.”

I judge a person’s worth by the degree to which he is kind to his world, and by that I mean all of it—people, flora and fauna. I never saw or heard George deviate from a perfectly honest and natural kindness on any occasion. Some, I know, mistook this for detachment. None should believe it for a nanosecond. You may grasp the essence of George’s brand of kindness if you can recall the character of the high lama in the 1930’s film Shangri-La, and the manner in which the role was performed by the great character actor, Sam Jaffe.

The world of 2001 is far harsher and more demanding than the world of forty years ago. Thus today it invariably seems necessary, when describing the personality of another, to leaven praise with irony lest we suffer the embarrassment of being viewed as overly emotional, biased or not sufficiently objective. Irony in describing the kindness of George Burnett is not necessary in the slightest degree. George was the genuine article. That is how I wish George to be remembered, and I am confident that he will. And that is why I have now come to think of him, rather than Lou Gehrig, as “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.”

John Keene ’64