David Cloyd Burn was born on April 14, 1947, in Nebraska City, NE. He was the second of two sons born to Dorothy Steele Burn and Eldon Burn. He died at Pikes Peak Center in Colorado Springs on January 23, 2023. He was 75. 

Dave Burn graduated from Benson High School in Omaha in 1965. At Benson, he was an outstanding student and an All-City and All-State football player. Dave played defensive tackle in the Nebraska Shrine Bowl and attended Midland College in Fremont, NE on a football scholarship. 

He met his wife, Lauri Daugherty (Burn Shafer), at Benson. Dave and Lauri were married in Blair, NE in 1964. Their first and only child, David, was born the following April. Dave and Lauri divorced two years later, and Dave was called to serve in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He was stationed in Okinawa. 

During the 1970s, he worked on the Alaska pipeline. While living in Alaska, he built and lived in an off-grid cabin. One day, flush with cash from his work on the pipeline, he walked off the ferry from Alaska and into the BMW dealership in Seattle where he paid cash for a new motorcycle. The German-made bike had a sidecar. He drove it home to Omaha, where he started a chain link fence company. He was a skilled craftsman who took pride in his work.

Away from work, Dave was an avid reader. His favorite writer was Jack London. Like London, Dave had an adventurous spirit and a quick wit. Like London, he heard his own call of the wild. For nearly three decades, he lived on a rural property in Colorado’s Black Forest (he helped caretake for its owners, his aunt Ruth Ann Steele and uncle Jim Steele). 

He was preceded in death by his father, Eldon Leroy Burn, and his mother Dorothy Steele Burn. He is survived by his son David Charles Burn, his brother Eldon Charles Burn, and nephew Geoffrey Charles Burn.