Molly Harsh Burns does several walking tours of downtown Magnolia every year, giving an oral history of buildings in the area. It all started when members of the Columbia County Sesquicentennial Committee asked her in 2002 to write a history of downtown for a walking tour (downtown only) and a driving tour (downtown but also further out into the county). Since then, she has been telling the history of the buildings on and around the square but, beyond that, she has been telling “stories” — and sometimes the veracity of those doesn't matter all that much. A good story is a good story, often made better with some embellishment.
“I take Leadership Magnolia and 10th-graders, YACs [Youth Advisory Council]. Sometimes other groups ask me to do it — civic groups, church groups,” Burns said. “So I usually average about three or four trips a year. And the story changes all the time, because people add to the story. I collect information from the story, so I add to the story also.”
“Originally, the story starts with my great-granddaddy’s home, which sat downtown [near] where Andy’s [restaurant] is now,” she said. “I start with the story of Mr. R.S. Warnock, who was the first president of Farmers Bank. I make a walk from there and tell the stories of the buildings and point out unique things about them. We have lots of unique things that have happened through the years in Magnolia that you can see by looking at the buildings. Like the library [on Main] has medallions on the front of it and those medallions look like they have to do with an airplane propeller. And they do. I took the Arkansas Historical Association on a tour when they came here for their yearly meeting, and one of the ladies with me looked it up, researched it, and she found out that they were [Charles] Lindbergh's propellers. The building was built on the 10th anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight. So it’s a historical building enriched by a historical symbol on the outside.”
“I have about 15 things like this from Warnock’s [receipt from Davis and Warnock, then a hardware store] that go back in history, or pictures that I can show,” she said, producing other historic papers from stores around the square.
“I call myself a history collector,” Burns said, “I like to collect little symbolic pieces of history. So I add to my little speech.” She went on to say that she gave her talk at a local church not too long ago. Joe Kaar is credited with making it “mobile” for her. He took about 30 photographs on and around the square to create a PowerPoint presentation which she can use to present the tour anywhere. “It misses a lot but you don’t have to walk. I can point and click.” Some buildings on the square Burns knows stories about all the way back to the original surveys. Others, she said, she knows only what they hold today.
From her own lifetime, she recalled Magnolia’s centennial celebration in 1952, when she was only three years old.
“I remember the dress I wore to the parade and where I stood,” Burns said. She attended sixth grade in the old Magnolia High School (where Bancorp South is now), which was later City Hall. Her father, John Harsh, was the mayor of Magnolia during the time that City Hall was housed in that building. “I cried when they burned it down,” she said. She was attending Magnolia High School in its current location when the football stadium was built. The college (SAU), she said, has always been the center of Magnolia, and people said “how lucky” Magnolia was to have it. She also remarked that Magnolia has been fortunate to have industry that keeps it going.
“One of the neatest things I’ve seen to the growth of Magnolia is the new hospital,” she said, pointing out that the old hospital was built in the 1930s and had simply been enlarged through the years. “By now we wouldn’t have much left.” Burns is very active in her support of the hospital, serving as a Magnolia Regional Medical Center commissioner as well as on the MRMC Board of Directors.
Burns taught school at Northside High School in Fort Smith for four years after finishing her degrees and from 2001 to 2005, she taught geography at SAU. Besides serving the hospital in several capacities, she is a past member of the Junior Charity League and still helps them whenever they need it; she has been chairman of and loves to participate in the Follies (she is one of the “Follies Dollies”); she enjoys teaching Sunday School at First Methodist; and she loves to travel, which she does a lot with the SAU Foundation.
“We’re going to Greece in a month,” she said. Other places she has been with the Foundation include southern France, the Amalfi Coast (Italy), Ireland, Belgium, and The Netherlands.
“When I travel, I buy little pieces that remind me of the history. And I buy postcards because not only do they remind you of the history, they tell you on the back,” Burns said. She said her mother has been a great traveling companion through the years, and that they went to China when her mother was 80.
What she loves a great deal is working with people and being a committee member on projects and fund-raisers. “Working together is how things get done,” she said. “My friends are great mentors, as were my parents and grandparents.”
Something people might not know about Molly Burns is that she likes to ride horses, even though she doesn't get to any more, and she doesn't like to cook. She pointed toward the glass-paned door that leads to her back yard.
“See those fingerprints? Those are from a two-year-old,” she said, referring to a grandchild. “That's one of my favorite things.”