It was that love that actually sent him on his legendary music career. One night in 1930 at Eastern Illinois University, legend has it that Ives got busted taking part in an excursion to the Pemberton Hall women’s dorm. School officials found him a tad intoxicated and playing the piano in the lobby.

But Burl — a football player and history major with shoddy grades — was close with Eastern's president, Livingston C. Lord, who encouraged him to stop pursuing a teaching degree and instead begin focusing on his real talent: music.

With that, Ives hitchhiked across the country learning folk songs from cowboys, miners and evangelists, among others. The rest is history. He became the country’s favorite balladeer, won a part in a cherished Christmas special and was inducted into the EIU (Unofficial) Hall of Fame.

Described by his wife as a suprisingly shy man and a pretty bad cook, Ives died in April 1995 from cancer. He was 85.

Born one of seven children in Hunt, Illinois, Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives started learning folk tunes from his pipe-smoking grandmother and sang in church (his first gig was a soldiers' reunion at age 4). He went Newton High School and then to Eastern in 1927 — at the time called Eastern State Teachers College — where he studied history with the hope of becoming a teacher.

"I loved to play football," Ives said in a 1990 article in The Decatur Herald & Review. “That was the big magnet which drew me to Charleston. When I saw all the heat that the poor men (the coaches) have to endure to exist, I said, ‘Well, that's no life for me, so I think I'd better stick with the guitar.’

"I was called in to see Dr. Lord (Eastern's first president). This was in the summer of 1930. He looked at my record. First year, pretty good. Second year, so so. And the third year, less.

"He looked over and he said these are the words: 'I believe you have too restless a spirit to be an educator. You'd better look around a little.'

"My clothes and things were in the fraternity house, but I didn't want to bother with them," Ives remembered, "I just went off down the road."

After the encouragement from Livingston C. Lord, Ives wound his way to New York. He studied at Julliard and New York University, but spent most of his time on Broadway. In 1938, he became a full-time performer on the stage, radio and screen and was part of a folk group called "The Weavers."

Sometime after this, Burl Ives wound his way west where his career blossomed even more. He was an actor and his singing became legandary. He’s sang hundreds of songs, including Big Rock Candy Mountain, Lavender Blue, Have a Holly Jolly Christmas, One Hour Ahead Of The Posse, On top Of Ol’ Smoky, Home On The Range and Call Me Mr. In Between.

But, along with attending Eastern, Ives' greatest accomplishments include his 1950s Broadway role as Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and his 1962 rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on the holiday television special, which still runs every year. Ives won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Big Country.

According to Burl Ives’ official web site, in the early 1940s writer McKinley Cantor introduced Burl Ives to Carl Sandburg. "It’s a satisfaction," McKinley said, "to bring together the most noted living ballad singer born in the 19th century, yourself, and the mightiest ballad singer born in the 20th century, Burl Ives.

Burl Sandburg responded, "Burl Ives is the mightiest ballad singer born in any century!"

Soon after his death, a monument to Burl Ives at his burial place, Mound Cemetery in Jasper County Illinois, was built.

"No matter where you stand, it seems like his eyes are looking at you,” wife Dorothy Ives is quotes as saying on the Official Burl Ives website. "And Liz (Hartrich-Goss, the creator) has made the monument as solid and earthy as Burl. I love it!"

Burl has bunches of tributes in Illinois. In 1995, a bridge on Highway 130 at the north entrance to Newton, Illinois, was named Burl Ives Bridge and there is a "Home Place of Burl Ives" museum dedicated.

In addition to those, there is a "Burl Ives Day" in the City of Los Angeles, he won the "Bob Hope Humanitarian Award" and San Joaquin County on April 1988 called Burl Ives “The World’s Greatest Folk Singer.”

The Eastern Illinois University Foundation (left) gave him a plaque and school named a building after him — one of the few alums that has such an honor.

Sources for information and some photos: Burl Ives Official International Web Site, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Tribute Site, Remembering Burl Ives, Please Don't Get Up, The Daily Eastern News, The Library of Congress and Demolay International