Documentary dignitary Ken Burns, best known for his evocative PBS productions, accepted the Enoch Pratt Library’s Lifetime Literary Achievement Award Saturday in Baltimore.

You’ve won an Emmy and received an Oscar nomination, but this award is especially meaningful to you, why?

My father grew up in Baltimore. And for a very long time, my grandparents’ house [at Kelly Avenue and Cross Country Boulevard] was my family’s center of gravity. My mother died when I was 12 years old, she was sick with cancer all my life. It was a long and horrible process and left us all pretty much adrift. My grandmother [Emily Lucile Moore Burns] took over a major role in my life. I’m not sure if you’d be talking to me if it wasn’t for her.