2016 CHRONICLE FILE PHOTO — Dr. Kenneth Burden stands in front stained-glass windows that were made in memory of his late wife, Clarita, in the entryway at the Chehalis Seventh Day Adventist church in 2016. The windows were made by Marcy Anholt.
Many knew Dr. Kenneth Burden as the physician who welcomed their babies into the world at St. Helens Hospital in Chehalis.
Others visited him as their general practitioner at Doctors Medical Clinic, today known as Steck Medical Clinic, where he worked for more than a quarter of a century.
Still others remembered his wife, Clarita Burden, who taught piano lessons in Lewis County, the first local person named to the Washington State Music Teachers Association Hall of Fame.
But most of those who gathered Saturday afternoon for his memorial service recalled his dedication as an instructor in the Sabbath school at the Chehalis Seventh-day Adventist Church, where he shared God’s word and teaching with adults and children for years and sang during every Christmas season Handel’s “Messiah.”
I knew Dr. Burden for only a season in the fall of 2018, when he hired me to capture and preserve his life story in a book called “Our Wonderful Life with Itchy Feet.” Clarita, who started playing piano at age 9, had written her story before she passed away Sept. 12, 2013. I was honored to hear his stories and amazed at his organized photo albums capturing the places and dates of the trips he and his wife made to all seven continents and more than a hundred of the world’s 195 countries.
In March 2013, The Chronicle wrote a story about their achievement in visiting all 3,007 counties in the United States. During the late 1950s, they started keeping track of the counties where they traveled and completed their sojourn five months before Clarita died with a 200-mile trip in the Ohio area to visit the last 14.
He was born Nov. 20, 1926, on Vancouver Island in British Columbia and moved to Colorado, where he attended junior high and high school. At Union College in Nebraska, he met Clarita, and they maintained a long-distance relationship for two years while she completed her studies in Colorado and he studied medicine at Loma Linda University Medical School in California. He practiced medicine in Maryland, Oregon, Puerto Rico (for a dozen years), and California before settling in Chehalis in 1973. They had four children — Gary, twins Dan and Don, and Debbie.
After his wife died, Dr. Burden often traveled alone on bird watching trips throughout the United States and cruises all over the world. In 2018, when he was 91, he drove to Loma Linda for his 65th medical school reunion and to Nebraska for his 70-year Union College reunion. He flew to New Jersey and drove to Rifle Refuge near Vancouver, B.C., for bird-watching trips. Every year, he traveled 6,000 miles by car to visit his adult children.
And, he told me, he was on a waiting list for a cruise from Rome to Dubai, which would give him a couple of new countries.
In his book dedication, he wrote, “I hope my children and grandchildren will see how the Lord has led in my life and Clarita’s too. I pray they will cherish the love of the Lord and follow Him all the days of their lives.”
He ended his book the way he closed his Christmas letters to family members and friends: “Jesus is coming soon, so if we don’t get together sooner, I hope to meet you all then.”
Remembering Freedom
Sunday, Feb. 23, marked the 75th anniversary of two significant events in 1945 during World War II — the raising of the U.S. flag on the Japanese volcanic island of Iwo Jima and the raid at Los Baños, a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines, which freed 2,142 emaciated American, British, Canadian, Australian and other civilians.
One of those prisoners was Robert Wheeler of Napavine, the 12-year-old son of an American father and a Filipino mother, who was incarcerated with his little brother, father, and German stepmother. I also helped Bob publish his book, “A Child’s Life: Interrupted by the Japanese Imperial Army,” in 2018.
When U.S. troopers from B Company of the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped from C-47s over the camp, Bob remembered their white parachutes resembled angels from heaven coming to rescue them. Other troopers, along with Filipino guerrillas, struck guard posts and barracks.
“We were later to find out that trenches/graves had been previously dug for our bodies as we were all scheduled to be executed — that very morning,” Bob said.
To mark the 75th anniversary, he and others gathered Saturday afternoon at Ramblin’ Jack’s Ribeye in Napavine to watch the History Channel’s documentary, “Rescue at Dawn — The Los Baños Raid,” which has been described by retired Gen. Colin Powell as “the textbook airborne operation for all ages and all armies.”
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.
