Elizabeth Betty Van Arsdale Burns

Elizabeth Van Arsdale “Betty” Burns Prominent Wichitan Betty Burns passed away on February 9, 2005 at her home in Wichita. She was 83. Born Elizabeth Mae Van Arsdale in Augusta on December 1, 1921, Betty was the second of three sisters. An outstanding student, she graduated Wichita East High School at age 16 and went on to attend the University of Wichita. She married Robert Price in March 1942, but was widowed five months later when his plane was shot down over Guadalcanal. She gave birth to his son, also named Robert, in January 1943. The loss of her husband and a bout with polio six years later led Betty to become a 25-year volunteer with the Red Cross, her way of giving back to an organization that had helped her in times of need. In 1949, she married Edward C. Burns, who would later become President of Beech Aircraft, and in 1954 welcomed her second son, Walter, into the world. The family moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1960 where Betty became an active force in local Republican politics. A year after surviving cancer in 1967, she returned to Wichita and turned her energies to working with the American Cancer Society. She served as President and Chairman of the Wichita Center for the Arts during the 1970s and 1980s, laying the foundation for the prominence it today enjoys. Of the many civic projects that she and her husband supported, her proudest was their major contribution to the new Wichita State University Welcome Center, currently under construction on the site of the old Crestview Country Club, where she and Edward first met in 1946. But as her many friends will attest, Bettys greatest accomplishments lay not in philanthropy, politics, volunteerism or the arts, but in the richness she brought to the lives of others. An incurable optimist, world traveler and lover of life, Betty Burns was a loving mother, a devoted wife, and a treasured confidant to her countless friends. Throughout her life, she answered calamity with optimism, looking for the good in all she encountered. Asked once to discuss the setbacks she had overcome, which included polio, cancer and a twice-broken neck, her response was “those werent setbacks, those are the things that made me who I am.” To all those who knew and loved her, she was someone very special indeed; an extraordinary woman who through her very existence made the world a brighter place. She is survived by her husband, Edward, of Wichita, son and daughter-in-law Robert and Ellen Price of Boulder, Colorado; son and daughter-in-law Walter and Kirsty Burns of San Rafael, California; sister and brother-in-law Paula and Col. William Gibbons of Macon, Georgia; cousins Mary Lynn and Bill Oliver of Wichita and grandchildren Lara Price of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Michael Price of Boulder and Elizabeth and Mack Burns of San Rafael. Memorials have been established with the Wichita Center for the Arts, 9112 East Central, Wichita, KS 67206; St. James Episcopal Church, 3750 E. Douglas, Wichita, KS 67208 and The Wichita State University Foundation, 1845 Fairmount Wichita, KS 67260. Services are planned for 10:00 A.M. on Saturday at St. James Episcopal Church, 3750 E. Douglas in Wichita. Downing Lahey Mortuary East.