Burns, Herman
Herman Franklin Burns was born October 2, 1903, in Nashville, Tennessee, to Rev. Henderson Franklin and Eva Redmond Burns. He married Robbye Lucille Hall of Dover, Tennessee, in August, 1933. Burns began work at the Board in 1928 as the first Staff Artist employed by the Sunday School Board, SBC. He later became the Board’s Art Editor, then Art Director, then Director of the first Art Department for any Southern Baptist agency. The Art Department at the Board grew to a staff of 50 under Burns’ direction, supplying art services for the Board’s hundreds of publications. He retired from the Board in 1970. Before coming to the Sunday School Board, Burns had served as Staff Artist for the Chicago Herald and Examiner and for the Nashville Capitol Engraving Company. A graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, he gained professional art training at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, American Academy of Art and the Art Institute, all in Chicago, Illinois; and the Arts Students League and Grand Central School of Art, in New York City. He was a co-founder and past president of the Art Directors Club of Nashville, and a member of the Art Directors Club of New York and the National Society of Art Directors. He died December 29, 1989, in Nashville, Tennessee.
This oral history interview was conducted at the Sunday School Board, SBC, by Marian Keegan, Archivist with the Dargan-Carver Library on February 12, 1974. In the interview, Burns describes his growing up years, educational background, and events that led to his employment at the Board. He gives his impressions of working at the Sunday School Board during the Great Depression, and the Board’s relationship with the Providence Lithograph Company that specialized in offering religious paintings. Burns discusses the organizational structure of the Art Department over the years and the Department’s objective and role within the Sunday School Board programs and services. The interview also includes Burns’ recollections of his involvement at First Baptist Church, Nashville, Tennessee, including his services as a deacon and chairman of the deacons; involvement with the church’s 150th anniversary celebration in 1970 and inviting Billy Graham as a speaker for the event; serving as director of the church’s Baptist Young People’s Union, Sunday School superintendent, chairman of the Lord’s Supper committee, and chairman of the pulpit committee that searched and found Franklin Paschall as pastor.
