James Douglas Burns died in Coupeville on his beloved Whidbey Island, June 8, 2007. It was a long way from Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes, where he spent his childhood summers sailing and the winters playing ice hockey.

Jim’s formal education was at Stanford University and the University of Chicago. His informal education started early, with his mother feeding him books. Reading sustained him through a number of different means of earning a living. He told of reading ancient Greek history at five in the morning before busing downtown to a “baffling” corporate job in Minneapolis. Before that, Jim’s first jobs were working in a “gulag-like” logging camp on the Nett Lake Indian Reservation near the Minnesota-Manitoba border, and as a laborer in a ship yard in Duluth.

During WWII, after leaving the corporation, he started a “garage” business that made wooden crates for shipping war materials. That business developed into the Burns/Yaak Lumber Company when he moved to Montana to build a sawmill. Before leaving Minnesota, Jim married Corrine Thrall of Minneapolis. They had a son Gillis and a set of twins, Candace and Geoffrey. His last job was on a 12,000-acre cattle ranch in Montana, which he owned and operated, and eventually sold. Jim and Corrine maintained a home in Spokane where Jim helped found St. George’s School. In order to maintain his home and businesses, Jim learned to fly his own plane.

In the years noted above, Jim continued reading, and wrote when he could. In 1971 he married Maxine Martell, who was then Curator of Art at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane. After selling the lumber company Jim enrolled in writing workshops with John Keeble and Wright Morris who became friends and correspondents. During those years he also developed a skill in photography as an art and after moving to Seattle, was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Photography. He then studied editing at the University of Washington and for six years was managing editor of, and wrote many critical essays for, Photography Northwest, a monthly publication distributed internationally. He published many articles in Argus, a Seattle weekly, and for Artweek, a California publication. He wrote for Friends of Photography, San Francisco, most notably for their book, Nine Critics. However, his abiding interest continued to be writing literary fiction, for which his different work experiences gave him material. His most recently published fiction was The Beauty of Barbed Wire, a 13,000-word story, published in 1999, in the Massachusetts literary journal, The Long Story.

Jim was a handsome, elegant man who took a great interest in the people who lived around him. Deeply intelligent, he followed local and world politics. He was a loyal friend to many. Mondays were reserved for golf with the “lunch bunch,” evenings for classical music on CBC. He loved his family and Scottish terriers fiercely.

Jim is survived by his wife, Maxine, his daughter, Candace Burns, son Geoffrey Burns and wife Linda, stepdaughter, Deanna DiBene; grandchildren, Elizabeth Neilsen and husband Jake, Cameron Burns, Syringa Burns, Colette Penketh and one great-grandchild, Abigail Neilsen. He was preceded in death by his son, Gillis. His nieces Nancy Burns and husband Scott Harrison, Kate Burns and husband Tim O’Neill, nephew Richard Burns and their children, Zach Burns, Tim Harrison, Erin and Meghan O’Neill and Katie Burns were cherished members of his family. There will be a private celebration of his life by family and friends in early August. He will be missed by all who knew him.