Jim & Lina Burton – reading iPad & Kindle respectively
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“Have you read the ‘Age of Entanglement,’ John,” Jim Burton asked.
“Why no,” I said.
“You must,” Jim said.
The book, “entanglement,” is the record of an historic dialogue, mostly in the roaring ‘20s, among the scientific greats including Einstein, Heisenberg, Rutherford, Planck, Bohr, Ehrenfest, Pauli, Mach, Sommerfeld, Born, and Lorentz, who puzzled over how there could exist an instantaneous “telepathic” connection between particles at a distance, that remained “entangled,” even though separated.
In one of our previous conversations, Jim mentioned I should read a book about religion and the founding fathers. “Did you read it?” Jim asked. “Yes, I did.”
Jim is like a monk-warrior, always in thoughtful meditation, and yet fully engaged in the field of action.
He has been a Supervisor, repeatedly elected since 1995 as an Independent, first in the Mercer District before it became the Blue Ridge District; Jim’s challenger in this Fall’s election for the Blue Ridge District is Janet Clarke, the Republican Nominee.
Asked how he decides public policy, he says, “I try to find an answer that makes my conscience feel right.”
This boy from Normal, Illinois, from a Railroad family, turned down the chance to be a pro baseball player to join the first class at the Air Force Academy, but it wasn’t until his 30s at the Pentagon that he found the mentor that posed the question that forged his character.
John Boyd, a defense department reformer, one of the greatest fighter pilots that ever lived, insisted that Jim read hundreds of books. Boyd may have been the most significant military theorist since Sun Tzu. Among Burton’s required reading, of course, were various editions of Tzu’s “The Art of War.” Also several books by the physicist Heisenberg. Boyd wrote a manual of air to air fighting tactics that influenced every air force in the world, he proposed drastically altered air craft designs, and taught Marine Corps fighters how to war as well.
Jim Burton, a graduate of the first class at the Air Force Academy in 1959, who flew tankers for the Strategic Air Command (SAC), and attended all three military schools after the Academy – the Squadron Officers School, the Air Command and Staff College, and the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, first thought Boyd was “crazy.” He saw Boyd in his office mimicking jet aerial combat maneuvers with his hands. Jim later found Boyd “fascinating” and then learned that Boyd was “crazy like a fox.”
“Boyd used to tell me,” said Jim, “you’ll come to a fork in the road and you’ll have to make a choice. Down one path you behave a certain way and you will be promoted and receive the riches of rank. You go down the other path and you will be self-rewarded for having done what was right for the situation no matter what the system says. But, if you ever challenge the system, it will come back at you -- big time.”
Jim followed his conscience, chose right over rank, and found himself in a war of reform with the Army and the Air Force. Air Force Colonel Burton was a specialist in weapons acquisition and testing, and he charged that the department’s “business of buying weapons” was “dirty and corrupt from top to bottom,” and that the government genuflected to defense contractors at the expense of soldier safety. His target was the untested Bradley Fighting Vehicle’s poor design, that cost the taxpayers a whopping $14 Billion, but was vulnerable to anti-armor weapons. Jim wanted to correct the design and expose the so-called “fighting” vehicle to a live fire test to assure it was battle ready. In the end, Jim prevailed, making the vehicle safer for service men and women in the Gulf War. But he was attacked because he did what was right – just as Boyd said.
Jim didn’t let it die; he wrote an expose, titled, “The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenged the Old Guard” and won 1st prize in the Washington Monthly’s Political Book Award in 1993. In the HBO Movie that followed, Cary Elwes, of “Princess Bride” fame played Jim; can’t complain about that; and you can get a tease of the feature on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E8DQSHkhGE . Jim may have thought he put public service behind him when he left the Pentagon to retire to the historic Mercer house in the village of Aldie.
But it was not meant to be. Soon after he “settled” in, there was a large flap over development proposed for 50 homes west of the village; it was, by all accounts, sprawl development, and not very “smart growth.” Jim said he was concerned then as now with “change coming that is dramatic … at a pace that we are not able to adjust to, and we can therefore expect dislocations to occur.”
Jim said, “this is what Alvin Toffler meant in his book, ‘Future Shock’ – ‘too much change in too short a period of time.” Toffler worried about such shock causing suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation.”
“Slow growth,” Jim said, “means at a rate that the community can adjust to and, as or more importantly, provide the necessary amenities and facilities.”
“In all my community activity, before and since I was on the Board,” Jim said, “that’s been my concern.”
“When we met with that Aldie developer at a Middleburg Restaurant,” Jim said, he “clenched his first” and came on “like a prize fighter,” and announced, “I’m going to fight you.”
That hardly intimidated Jim or the other Aldie residents who believed this development was wrong, and ultimately, Jim said, “after the dust settled, he pulled out.”
Soon, Jim appeared at many public meetings including the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors regarding questionable development projects proposed elsewhere in Loudoun County, particularly around the villages of Round Hill, that made no accommodation for the services the development required.
“I had become a citizen activist,” Jim said.
That wasn’t enough, in Jim’s mind, when a Sheriff’s Deputy served a subpoena seeking all of Jim’s personal records, because the developer sought to prove that Jim conspired with adjoining landowners who Jim didn’t know, supposedly to stop the development.
“That got me,” Jim said, “sitting in that court room, waiting for the court to quash that subpoena, that made me angry, that my fate was in their hands,” and, “that got me thinking to get more involved in the development process here in Loudoun County.”
Instead of appearing before the Board, Jim decided to run for the Board of Supervisors and was elected from the Mercer District, as an Independent.
Since he was first elected, Jim has resisted the residential development that the County can hardly afford, “unbridled growth” Jim calls it.
“The County has added 143,000 new residents since 2000,” Jim said, “and more than tripled its student population in the last 17 years.”
“We may have to build 49 more schools by 2026,” Jim said, “at the rate of 3 or more a year.”
More than that, Jim said, “we have 41,000 unbuilt residential units in the pipeline.”
Jim said we have to help the citizens, save where we can, and encourage slow growth.
In order to “guide the County through the maze in these uncertain economic times,” Jim says, we had lower taxes than in 2009, and we must maintain “our sound financial condition including our triple A rating, and, finally, we must prevent changes to the comprehensive plan that propose to open any more areas of the County to increased density, and resist the building pressure to open the transition area for development, that is, the area intended to be a transition from the urban east to the rural west.”
Jim then said, “He had to go.” Lina, his wife said he had to go. Jim delayed for a bit, “After I lost my first wife, Nancy Lee, to cancer, I was lost myself,” Jim said, “but I met Lina on a committee and she’s become my partner, side kick and campaign manager. All I can say is that I’ve been lucky to know two great women in my life.”
“One last question before you go, Jim, why are you an Independent?”
“I prefer to do my own thinking,” said Jim, “and take responsibility for my own thinking.”
