Alan Burden Memorial Service

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pennyk

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A memorial service will be held for Alan at Quakertown United Methodist Church, 1875 Freier Road, Quakertown, PA 18951 on Saturday August 11th at noon. According to the family, the easiest way to get to Quakertown (partially) by train is to take Amtrak to Philadelphia then SEPTA to Lansdale. From Lansdale to Quakertown, one can take an Uber for the 15-20 mile trip.
 
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Thanks Penny for letting us know.

Perhaps if anyone (many AUers
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) are going, possibly share an Uber from Lansdale?
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If anyone is interested I can shuttle people to Quakertown. I will be going. Contact me via PM if anyone is interested. I can handle 3 people in my car.

I'm 15 minutes from PHL.
 
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Below and attached is Alan's obituary

Alan Henry Burden, 57, of Woodside, Queens, NY passed away suddenly on Thursday, July 12, 2018 in Alabama while on a train headed for New Orleans. Born in Belleville, NJ on December 22, 1960, he was the oldest son of Henry L Burden and Grace M. Burden (Muench). He graduated from Belleville High School and worked as a computer accounting consultant for various companies. Alan shared his passion and knowledge of trains as a moderator for the Amtrak Unlimited Forum and other online train forums. His tagline for years has been “Take care and take trains”. Alan enjoyed volunteering for work weekends at Camp Eagle Island, skiing, and going to Shania Twain concerts. He also enjoyed attending concerts and sporting events for his multiple nieces and nephews. Alan is preceded in death by his father, Henry L Burden; and a sister, Tara. He is survived by his mother Grace, of Saylorsburg, PA; sister Allison and her husband, Kenneth Ghorm; brother Craig and his wife Susan; his step-mother, Maria of Orwigsburg, PA; brother, Darrin and brother Darryl; sisters Christa, Carrie, and Crystal; and three nieces and three nephews. A Celebration of Life service will be held for Alan on August 11, 2018 at 12:00pm at Quakertown United Methodist Church in Quakertown, PA. Contributions can be made in his name to Friends of Eagle Island at eagleisland.org.

Alan obituary.pdf
 

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Thanks. It's nice to learn a bit about the other things in Alan's life that he enjoyed doing other than trains.
 
So far as we know, the following are attending:

Pennyk, jis, Shanghai, PRR60, Ryan, Acela150.

There may be others from the AU family that are going that we are not aware of.
I believe Amtrakblue will be attending as well as Steve4031 and Mike H
 
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Today was the service for our amazing friend. About a dozen AU members attended. It was a very nice service to honor our friend. The family was and is extremely grateful for our messages on AU. One of his family members who delivered remarks even read words from AU user NorthShore. At one point the AU members were asked to stand and were recognized by Alan's family. Grace also spoke at the service delivering some remarks thanking us. PennyK and myself also gave some memories of our long time friend.

In the link is a video tribute that was played at todays service. The video is about 10 minutes long.

 
On a lighter note regarding the service. Ryan and I sat next to each other as you see. Jishnu walked to his seat and looked at us and said from behind we looked like two big clouds. [emoji23] We both got a good chuckle out of it. I will say though it was nice to see a few friends again. Even though the circumstances were not ideal. But Alan made a huge impact on many of us.

I’ll share a quick story that Alan’s brother in law shared. I think the many people that attended laughed at it quite hard.

We all knew Alan as a jokester. Hence the term “Alanism’s”. His brother in law got him back one time on a drive from Philadelphia back to his house in the Lehigh Valley. He said that he (his brother in law) was having a few adult beverages and Alan was a designated driver. Alan was merging onto a highway when his brother in law decided to use his Bluetooth by playing two gunshots and sirens. His brother in law said Alan was almost furious and it was the only time he saw him in such a state.

I think we all found it hilarious that the jokester got his for once. [emoji4][emoji23]
 
Still trying to gather my thoughts on this one...

Something that occurred to me as I was sitting there in the sanctuary was how difficult it was wrapping ones head around the loss of someone that you only see in person on an infrequent basis. The pain and the immediate sense of loss on the part of his family was evident, and very different from the more hypothetical sense of loss that I felt.

Sitting there looking at Alan's picture on the table next to the box containing his ashes, it finally started to break through to me that when we all Gather next month, he won't be there to join us. That hurts.

But despite that, it was an amazing experience to learn more about Alan the brother and uncle, rounding out our picture of Alan the fellow train enthusiast. It's a shame that it takes something like this to learn "the rest of the story" about our fellow forum members. His family is a wonderful group of people that very graciously welcomed us in. Having heard so much about us, they were as eager to hear about our recollections of Alan and learn more about this side of Alan's life. They are also amazingly talented, the same brother in law that related the story above is a heck of a singer in the church's praise band, and his niece played and amazing piece on the marimba.

All said, I can't think of a better way to have spent a day. It was an honor to be able to do so, and a pleasure to see some friendly faces a little bit sooner than I had planned.

I'll leave you with a video of the last song at the service. The church band (all of whom were amazing) prepared this for tomorrow's service, and at the last minute realized that the train theme made it perfect for his service and included it.

 
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