November 22, 1999
Contact: Joe Potts, international student services, (785) 864-3617 or Mary Jane Dunlap, University Relations, (785) 864-8853.
LAWRENCE -- Around the world, hundreds of University of Kansas alumni remember a Thanksgiving weekend in Burns, a farm community with a post office, a bank, a restaurant and a feedstore, located about 60 miles northeast of Wichita.
On Friday, Nov. 26, a half dozen KU international students will join many of the 280 residents of Burns for a special traditional post-Thanksgiving community dinner at 6:30 p.m. in the Burns United Methodist Church.
"This year we will honor Betty," said Esta Hall, referring to her neighbor and friend Betty Grimwood, who died in May.
Forty-five years ago, Grimwood and her friend Bonnie Lorentz began a tradition that gained Burns national attention. They invited international students from KU, about a three-and-half-hour drive from Burns, to spend Thanksgiving with families in Burns.
Many KU international alumni have maintained contact with families they met during a Thanksgiving weekend at Burns. A few Burns residents, including Ed and Betty Grimwood, have visited some of their former Thanksgiving guests in their home countries.
Ed Grimwood said he continues to receive condolence notes from people he and his wife met during the 44 years she helped organize the annual community event.
In 1959, then Vice President Richard Nixon president presented the Grimwoods a Distinguished Service Award from the Institute of International Education. The program was featured in the Sept. 5, 1959, Saturday Evening Post magazine.
This fall, KU officials named the annual Thanksgiving homestay program, which includes other Kansas and greater Kansas City area families, in memory of Betty Grimwood.
At the Nov. 26 community dinner, posters made over the years by KU international students as they visited Burns will be displayed along with notes from KU alumni from around the world. Lorentz, now a Wichita resident, will speak.
Carmen Libertino of Houston is an alumna of the first Burns Thanksgiving in 1954, when she was a postgraduate student in bacteriology from Colombia. She returned to Burns in May to attend services for Betty Grimwood.
Libertino said she regarded Betty Grimwood and Bonnie Lorentz as adopted mothers and has kept in touch with both women over the years. The Grimwoods sponsored Libertino when she wanted to immigrate to the United States.
"I think the success [of the Burns Thanksgiving] was that all foreign students are lonely. These people didn't ask anything of you. They just showed you the heart of America. Betty was the heart of the program," Libertino said.