CANCER TALES Warrior dad battled tongue cancer to the end
Robert L. Burke and his nephew, Capt. Corey King of the Georgia
National Guard before King’s deployment to Iraq in Spring 2005.
There were not too many battles that my father, Robert L. Burke,
could not win, but his last one, the one he fought the hardest,
he lost.  Dad was the youngest of seven children. He was
originally from Helena, Ark. He married my mother, Sara, a
Georgia girl, and they had four children. They settled in
Georgia after he retired from the Air Force.  Dad was the person
in our family we could always turn to for help with anything. If
he did not know how to do it, he figured it out. He once built a
console color TV in our living room out of a kit he bought.  Dad
was diagnosed with cancer of the tongue in June 2003. He had
never smoked and was not a drinker. He was exposed to a lot of
secondhand smoke during his days in the military when it was an
accepted practice to smoke in the workplace.  Surgery was an
option, but we were to