Elizabeth Burns; Restaurant Owner Led State Association

Elizabeth Teeter Burns, who headed the Bob Burns Restaurants she and her late husband founded and went on to become the first woman president of the California Restaurant Assn., has died. She was 84.

Burns died Tuesday in Santa Monica.

A Los Angeles native, Burns helped her husband create their first Scottish-decor Bob Burns Restaurant in 1967--the only restaurant originally located in Newport Beach’s tony new Fashion Island shopping center. After Bob Burns’ death in 1971, Elizabeth Burns took a condensed business management course at Harvard and continued operating the restaurants. By that time, there were Bob Burns Restaurants in Santa Monica and in North Hollywood.

The original restaurant, which served continental cuisine seven days a week, closed last New Year’s Eve, a victim of the shopping center’s preference for trendier eateries such as Wolfgang Puck and P.F. Chang’s. The North Hollywood establishment also closed, but the San Fernando Valley had other opportunities to sample Burns fare--at a Bob Burns Restaurant in Warner Center and at the Marmalade Cafe in Sherman Oaks, opened by the couple’s three children in 1995.

After her election in 1992 as the first woman president of the California Restaurant Assn., Burns became an eloquent spokeswoman for restaurateurs’ problems. She spoke out vociferously against making restaurant employees “cigarette police” and urged uniform laws governing smoking in eating establishments. She vigorously opposed proposed federal legislation cutting tax deductions for business meals.

“Clearly, the restaurant business is one of our state’s most important employers,” Burns wrote in a commentary for The Times in 1993. “The proposed reduction in business meal deduction could cost 22,711 restaurant jobs in California, more than 10,000 in Southern California alone. These workers are primarily women and minorities. It could also mean the loss of $517 million in restaurant sales--along with the sales tax revenues our state depends on.”

A tireless community and charity worker, Burns served on the boards of the UCLA/Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center Foundation, the Salvation Army, the Santa Monica Planning Commission, and the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising.

She earned the City of Hope’s Spirit of Life Award in 1983 for her efforts on behalf of the Duarte cancer research facility, the YMCA Woman of the Year honor in 1989 and a lifetime achievement award named for her from the Community Redevelopment Agency’s Westside Chapter.

Burns is survived by her children, Beth, Bonnie and Bobby; two sisters, Grace and Helen; two brothers, John and James, and four grandchildren.

Memorial services will be private.

The family has asked that any donations be sent to the UCLA/Santa Monica Hospital Medical Center Foundation or to the Los Angeles Chapter of Operation Smile.