Dr. Richard Burns

Dr. Richard Burns served over 30 years as an Internist in Jonesboro, at Saint Bernard’s Medical Center, and Jonesboro Internal Medicine Associates, now Clopton Clinic.  He was born in 1934 in Bellevue, Nebraska, to Homer and Leola Burns, the first of three boys.  Due to his father’s position with the Army, the family moved around the country, eventually to TN, where he met Laura Grizzard, whom he eventually married.  When his father was deployed to Germany, the family traveled as well.  He attended a German university for a year, before coming back to TN, and marrying his sweetheart.  He went to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville then to UT Medical School in Memphis.  In 1960, he started his residency at the Baptist Hospital in Memphis.  The last year of residency, he served as a fellow of the Tennessee Heart Association and worked on research in cardio-pulmonary diseases.

Dr. Burns practiced in Memphis before coming to Jonesboro, prompted by his colleague, Dr. Owen Clopton.  They had been close friends during residency, and continued their friendship after completing their training.  In 1967, Dr. Burns agreed to join Dr. Clopton in Jonesboro.  He brought unique skills to the medical community, in Jonesboro, as he had specialized training in internal medicine and in cardio-pulmonary diseases.  He could place temporary cardiac-pacemakers and perform liver biopsies, procedures not available, locally, at that time.  He served as the tuberculosis control doctor for Lawrence County, and he and Dr. Clopton initiated the inpatient treatment of tuberculosis at St Bernard’s when the Booneville sanatorium was closed.   For many years, He served as chairman of the intensive care committee and director of the intensive care unit.

Burns (Dick) was very busy from the time he joined the Jonesboro practice, and stayed busy, with little time for extra-curricular activities, until the practice began to grow and more specialists moved to the community. This gave Dick a little time for himself and family.   He developed an interest in running and ran some road races with his son, Bob.  He began training for a marathon, eventually running a total of seven.  He also enjoyed swimming, biking, and playing tennis.  When he could get away to the family cabin on Spring River, he enjoyed trout fishing and canoeing with his sons, or enjoying the peace and quiet with a good book by Tolstoy, Chekov, or Solzhenitsyn, with one of his Boston Terriers at his side. He was an avid reader of history, and medicine, as well.

In 1998, Dick retired from the internal medicine practice.  He was honored by the Jonesboro Heart Guild, the local chapter of the American Heart Association in 1999 for outstanding contributions to the community.   He continued working as a volunteer physician for the Jonesboro Church Health Clinic from 1992 until 2012.  After the death of his wife, in 2012, he went to live with his son in Maine.  He continued to study medicine daily, and kept in touch with friends by e-mail. He stayed current with CME and kept his license to practice medicine in AR renewed yearly until this year.  He particularly enjoyed driving along the Maine coastline.

It was during the summer this year that he came to stay for a while at the family cabin on Spring River.  While there, his health deteriorated, he entered hospice October 7, and died on October 10.  Family members were with him when he died.  Living relatives include a brother, Tom Burns of AR, three sons, Rick (Ann) of VA, Bob (Betty) of MS, Tim (Mary) of ME. He has four grandchildren, Jake, Caroline, Alex, and Robin, and one great-grandchild, Richard, Caroline’s child. The family plans to have a private service, scattering Dick and his wife’s ashes, at one of their favorite places.

If memorials are desired, please consider the Humane Society, as Dick really loved his dogs and grand-dogs.