Mickey Burriss     Eastover, SC Thank you for visiting my web site. I hope you enjoy your stay. Please return often. I'll try to keep it current. Your helpful suggestions will be sincerely appreciated. Best Regards, Mickey Burriss On the frosty morning of February 25,1937 Mickey Burriss was born in Anderson, S.C. His father William T. Burriss worked as an electrician. His mother Sybil Lyles Burriss suffered to keep the family intact by living in an olive-green seventeen-foot house trailer and moving from one construction job to another. Trailer life was an adventure for her three baby boys. Looking back Mickey sees the difficulty she had caring for a family in such cramped space. During high school Mickey seldom studied. He graduated from B-C after attending summer school for failing senior English. His English teacher Miss McCaskill is the one who instilled in him the wonder of writing. She never knew of his discovery that writing could be fun. Miss McCaskill told the class in 1955 to write a story. That was her only instruction. Mickey never did homework, believing he was too far behind to ever catch up, but he felt compelled to complete the assignment. This urge to do homework was a mysterious first for him. He wrote about swimming underwater with an aqua-lung, something he had always wanted to do but never had. When writing he mentally lived the story, paddling beside the kid with the aqua-lung, watching his every move, sensing his feeling, knowing his thoughts and wondering what would happen next. Upon completing the story, he could not believe the writing came from his head. If there was a copy available today, he would be critical and probably ashamed. But not then, not a boy who had never felt he could do anything right, finally found something he liked. The English class was composed of the school’s best. Miss McCaskill singled him out and made him read the story. Mickey believed the teacher chose to embarrass him because he was a bad student. He doesn’t recall the grade she gave. He would have remembered a high grade for its oneness. She never said the story was good. No one else did. Mickey says, “Good or bad, that story was the best thing I had ever done. I still get that feeling when trying to write now. Please don’t think I’m boasting. I’m not a writer. Trying to write is what I do. I will never be a writer. I’ll never be worthy of that honor. Like a doctor practices medicine I practice writing. My reward is living the stories when trying to write.” In 1954, while still in high school, he volunteered for the Naval Reserve and served aboard the USS Forrestal CVA-59 during it’s maiden cruise to the Mediterranean. His squadron VA-15 made him plane-captain on the Douglas AD-6 Skyraider. During his Naval service, Mickey realized he must attend college and study. He worked at the Holiday Inn to finance his way through the University of South Carolina. With little time for study, he squeezed in two semesters of singing baritone in the USC concert choir. After graduating during 1961 in Business Management, he went to work in Spartanburg with the South Carolina Employment Security Commission. Here he was introduced to McLean Trucking Company. After completing McLean’s sales training program in Winston Salem, N.C., McLean transferred him to Louisville, Kentucky. Mickey enjoyed working in Louisville soliciting manufacturers to ship by McLean. One of his customers was Hillerich and Bradsby Company makers of Louisville-Slugger bats. The manufacture of bats was fascinating but during his 1963 Christmas visit home he recognized the beginnings of an economic boom and returned to work in the family electrical business. South Carolina enjoyed a surging economy for several decades. Not only did he enjoy prosperity, he fortunately met his future wife Joyce Crosby. The girl he would later describe as the wife he would want beside him on the seat of a covered wagon if he were to cross the country during the 1800’s. Forty-four years later, after raising two sons, having four grandchildren, and retiring from the electrical business, he describes Joyce as the best person he has ever met and has heard others say the same. Mickey credits Joyce and his sons, Tommy and Hank, with winning a special election to the South Carolina House of Representatives and three general elections before retiring from politics. The legislature bestowed the honor of serving on The Citadel Board of Visitors and the South Carolina Senate appointed him Richland County Bond Court Judge for five years. Listening to his heart, upon retirement in 2003, he wrote a chapter each week intended as a letter to his grandson. As pages piled higher and their content drifted to subjects unfit for a teen, Mickey decided the un-mailed compositions were the beginning of a manuscript. Mickey has completed five manuscripts of Southern historical fiction. Three are set in an up-state fictional South Carolina cotton-mill town, Tugaloo. They show life in a mill village and work in textiles. Mickey has written for The State and Anderson Independent Mail news papers, Living in South Carolina, the magazine for electric cooperatives, Small Farmer’s Journal and HCI Books. His fiction has appeared in The First Line and Overtime. He writes full time and is a member of the South Carolina Writers Workshop, attending their critique groups and workshops. The Sandhills Writers Conference in Augusta, Georgia he has also enjoyed.