Renie Burghardt

One Writer's Life.

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What one can be, one must be." ~Maslow~

The quote above is one of my favorite quotes. I firmly believe "what one can be, one must be!"

I am a writer who suffered many hardships, saw much destruction and tragedy as a child, during World War II in Hungary. At the same time, I experienced some genuine miracles during those times, saw people rise above and survive many hardships, and was the recipient of much compassion and kindness. Those experiences helped to make me into the person I am today, and inspired me to write about them many years later, thus taking away their haunting power over me, even many years later.

In a refugee camp in Austria, where I lived for four years, I learned to love nature. I used to escape that drab camp, with it's rows and rows of old army barracks lined up like soldiers, and sit by a beautiful river, gazing up at the mountains in the distance, and dream about a better life in the future. That river, those beautiful mountains gave my heart hope and saved me from despair. And that better life was realized when my family and I immigrated to the United States of America in the early fifties!

I had my very first story published in 1954 in a popular magazine of those times called, The American Girl Magazine. The story was called, "Hi There," and I had written it for an assignment for English class. My English teacher, a kind, compassionate nun, suggested I send the story to the magazine's "By You" section, where young, budding female writers had their first taste of being published. It won the first non-fiction award, got published, and I got a whopping $10 for it. My first taste of fame, giving a much needed boost to a young DP girls very fragile self esteem!

Although I did not continue writing at that time, for I was married a few years later, raised a family, and hardly had time to write, except for occasional stories for my two young sons and daughter.

This past Christmas, my daughter Andrea somehow found a copy of that old American Girl Magazine on Ebay, and gave it to me as a Christmas present. A genuine gift of the heart, that I treasure!

Anyway, in the early 1980s, when my three children were grown and living lives of their own, and I was newly single again, I decided to follow my dream of living in the country. So I moved to my own bit of heaven on earth, in a little corner of the beautiful Ozarks, where I can indulge in my love of nature, animals, hiking, jet skiing on the beautiful Current River (courtesy of one of my sons,) wildflower hunting, and writing again. It's been a wonderful 23 years, where I am still inspired by people, and where miracles still happen as well. But that's a story still to be written.

My stories have appeared in over 50 various anthologies, many magazines, and on the web, of course. I love my life here, and am actually grateful for all the past experiences that shaped me as a writer. "What one can be, one must be!"

Story ID:	213
Written by:	OurEcho Admin (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	In The Spotlight
Location:	Doniphan Missouri USA
Year:	2006
Person:	Renie Burghardt