Tulsa History: July 2018 Archives
William Newbill, who was a political activist in Tulsa in the 1970s and 1980s, emailed me a few days ago to ask whatever had happened to Accountability Burns. I haven't spotted him recently. The perennial candidate, who ran for mayor as recently as 2009, would be 91 years old. Over the years, I've spotted him at Central Library, a lunch room at TCC downtown, and around downtown.
William shared some memories from his years in Tulsa and his dealings with Burns, and he gave me his permission to share them here:
I left Tulsa in 94 to work for the feds as a lawyer. I had been active in both parties before then. I had a meteoric rise and fall in the GOP as a very young man from 1975-1980 which included a year at the RNC on Capital Hill. But I was thrown out in 1980 for refusing to support Reagan. I was Northeast Oklahoma Regional Co-Chair of the John Anderson Presidential Campaign. Those are mainly the times I saw the guy.It took many years to get inside with the Democrats in Tulsa but by the time I left I was an insider in the party. 84 County Convention delegate for Hart. 1988 State Convention Delegate for Dukakis, finally a high level volunteer in the 94 AG's Dem race for some guy in Tulsa, I think his name was Jeff Nix. But I got a job offer from the feds and left before the primary. He was facing Drew Edmondson which was a suicide mission.
Burns was a character I ran into from age 17 in 1975 while filing a high school friend for Street Commissioner under the old system. But I ran into him a lot mainly by accident. He kept up with me by mail for a long time.
I last saw Accountability Burns one night at TU in 1993 after night law school was out. He looked like a homeless guy. He was on disability for mental impairments, reportedly schizophrenia that emerged while a grad student in mathematics. I gave him a ride down 11th street to his apartment.
As a younger person, referring back to the late 70s, I didn't realize he was mentally ill until one meeting when he thought it was reasonable to ask for an advance payment of two million dollars to appear in a debate.
Back then he was a perennial candidate in every election. After that, and over the years, I received a "Mars Gram" in the mail from him occasionally. Usually these were postcards. It took a while to decipher the code but it was a revealing look at his paranoid thoughts often including references to the "black international." It wasn't clear this was a racial category but I never figured it out.
Mr. Science had tried to tell us younger people back in the 70s that Burns was "nuts" but we didn't believe him initially. He had determined Burns didn't even know the basics of cartography even though he claimed to have a Ph.D. in the field.
Newbill's Facebook post prompted a comment from retired University of Tulsa Professor Steve Steib, who wrote that Burns would drop by his office now and then in the 1970s:
He was, at the time, working on a universal language that would be spoken and understood by all of earth's humans. His presence often reminded me of the thin line between brilliance and crazy. As time passed he seemed to spend more time on the crazy side of that line. It made me sad to see such talent slip away.
I've seen some of Burns's writings from that period. He had an idiosyncratic phonetic spelling system which took some time to decipher. In many of his writings he would claim that his wife had been abducted and was being held for an impossible ransom.
A friend of mine who had had some dealings with Burns around the same period speculated, based on various references in his writing, that he had been one of a group of mathematical prodigies ("Einsteins," and thus perhaps the source of his "Einstein V" moniker) working on a secret government program and snapped mentally. The "black international" William Newbill mentions may be a reference to clandestine operations (as in "black ops"). I remember reading a feature story about Accountability some years ago, which included Burns's brother talking about his mental illness and his background, but I can't seem to find it now. It may pre-date the digital archive of Tulsa's local dailies, which only goes back to 1989.
According to this "You Know You're From Tulsa" thread, as of December 22, 2017, (his 91st birthday), he still regularly ate lunch at the Hillcrest Medical Center cafeteria. I haven't found any more recent sightings. Public records indicate that he is still on the voter rolls (as "A. Burns") but hasn't voted since casting an early ballot at the election board in the June 2012 primary.
Back in 2012, after I published a collection of links about Accountability Burns, a friend (I can't track down who) sent me some documents by Burns from 1975, 1984, and 1987. I transcribed Accountability Burns letter to the Bar Association, but never got around to transcribing the other two.
Accountability Burns for County Commissioner, January 22, 1987
Deeper in the archives there's a Tulsa Tribune article about Accountability Burns 1988 campaign for Police and Fire Commissioner. Some people remember that he referred to the office, under Tulsa's pre-1989 charter, as "Pig and Fyr" commissioner.
If you have seen Accountability around town lately, or if you have stories of Close Encounters of the E-5 Kind that you'd like to share, please email me at blog at batesline dot com or send me a message through my Facebook page.
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