What started out as a quest for information regarding her father’s years as Burbank’s police chief became a passion for Mary Jane Strickland. She discovered inaccuracies in the city’s records and set about inquiring about its methods, if any, for preserving historical data. Although the city library was storing precious historical documents and photographs, it became apparent to Mary Jane during this time that more had to be done. Soon after, she organized the Burbank Historical Society in 1973. She told the Los Angeles Times in a 1990 article, “I just started collecting things, putting things together and talking to people, and pretty soon I was a woman possessed.”