{"id":14395,"date":"2012-05-08T16:25:54","date_gmt":"2012-05-08T21:25:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/?p=14395"},"modified":"2014-09-23T08:32:33","modified_gmt":"2014-09-23T13:32:33","slug":"alumni-profile-ben-burns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumni Profile: Ben Burns"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

From left, Ole Miss Athletics Director Ross Bjork, Ben Burns (BSPh 94), Burns' son Konner, Head Football Coach Hugh Freeze, and Chancellor Dan Jones (MD 75) pose in front of Burns' RV during the 2012 Rebel Road Trip.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ben Burns (BSPh 94) of Iuka says that his life is made up of work and sports on all levels. As a huge Ole Miss fan, Life Member of the Ole Miss Alumni Association and Vaught Society member, his relationships with those at the Ole Miss Alumni Association and the UMAA Foundation meant that when plans began to form for the 2012 Rebel Road Trip, they knew about his RV.<\/p>\n

\u201cI figure they were sitting around a table in their office and thought \u2014 who better to suck into this?\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n

Many alumni saw the RV that Head Football Coach Hugh Freeze, Athletics Director Ross Bjork, Chancellor Dan Jones (MD 75), Alumni Association Executive Director Tim Walsh (BPA 83, MEd 91), and Alumni Association President Richard Noble (BBA 68, JD 73) rode in during most of the inaugural Rebel Road Trip, which hit 16 cities in six days to help spread excitement about Ole Miss Athletics and Alumni Association events. What many may not know is that the RV belongs to the owner of two pharmacies and a health clinic, who donated not only the RV, but his time, in order to drive it around the region.<\/p>\n

For Burns, driving an RV full of Ole Miss VIPs started off as nerve wracking. He said the road trip was like a job. He got up every morning to make sure everything on the RV was running right. He said he slept the full weekend after the road trip because he was so tired.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was great getting to know everybody,\u201d Burns said. \u201cIt was really cool.”<\/p>\n

Burns said he would do Rebel Road Trip again without a doubt. He joked about a \u201csmall reunion\u201d they are planning to have during the baseball game Friday against Tennessee, featuring Gus\u2019s Fried Chicken from Memphis \u2014 a place Burns says Coach Freeze made them stop.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be great to see everyone and eat some fried chicken and watch some baseball,” Burns said.<\/p>\n

One thing that was \u201ckind of weird\u201d to Burns was how often he was in the spotlight. He was in the middle of a picture that a local paper took of the group, and he was introduced at the events.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of them would say, \u2018… And back here is our bus driver,\u2019 and I would just say, \u2018Y\u2019all are embarrassing me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

It was \u201ca blast\u201d and Burns said he can\u2019t wait until the next one.<\/p>\n

As of May 7, the wrapper from Rebel Road Trip was still on the RV, but not for long.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hired a guy to take it off starting tomorrow (May 8),\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n

He hopes a new wrapper will take its place next spring. In fact, Burns wants to do it all again next year.<\/p>\n

The RV spends most of its time in storage, when not transporting Burns’ family to Ole Miss games or on a yearly vacation. It\u2019s getting a little bit of a rest after what Burns thinks was about 2,500 miles put on it during the Rebel Road Trip. Of the 16 Rebel Road Trip stops, the only ones the RV bypassed were Nashville and McComb, because it would have been physically impossible to drive to every single one.<\/p>\n

\u201cNinety percent of the time we use it is to go to Ole Miss sports in it,” Burns said. “Other than that, it\u2019s a family trip every year to some place like Destin or the Smoky Mountains. It\u2019s just like home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burns lives in Iuka with his wife and four children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Burns (BSPh 94) of Iuka says that his life is made up of work and sports on all levels. As a huge Ole Miss fan, Life Member of the Ole Miss Alumni Association and Vaught Society member, his relationships with those at the Ole Miss Alumni Association and the UMAA Foundation meant that whenRead the story …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14396,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlumni Profile: Ben Burns - Ole Miss News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alumni Profile: Ben Burns - Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ben Burns (BSPh 94) of Iuka says that his life is made up of work and sports on all levels. As a huge Ole Miss fan, Life Member of the Ole Miss Alumni Association and Vaught Society member, his relationships with those at the Ole Miss Alumni Association and the UMAA Foundation meant that whenRead the story …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Ole Miss News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-09-23T13:32:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/BenBurns.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2048\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1150\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@OleMissRebels\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/\",\"name\":\"Ole Miss News\",\"description\":\"The official source for University of Mississippi news\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/BenBurns.jpg\",\"width\":\"2048\",\"height\":\"1150\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/\",\"name\":\"Alumni Profile: Ben Burns - Ole Miss News\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"-0001-11-30T00:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-09-23T13:32:33+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/4515cb1b4f8a759552c0827c3df56430\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/news.olemiss.edu\/alumni-profile-ben-burns\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#\/schema\/person\/4515cb1b4f8a759552c0827c3df56430\",\"name\":\"admin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/0.gravatar.com\/avatar\/3e8e7562bf6d779d771ad8ce4cecd7ef?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"admin\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41001,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14395\/revisions\/41001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web20.olemiss.edu\/news\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}