Burt, Al, Jr., 1927-2008

Alvin Victor Burt (September 11, 1927 – November 29, 2008) an author and longtime journalist at The Miami Herald in Florida, was born Sept. 11, 1927, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia and grew up at the family home in Jacksonville, Florida. He served as a sports writer, news reporter, editor, editorial writer and columnist. Burt reported from Washington to Latin America and the Caribbean and throughout Florida. Before working with The Miami Herald he had positions with the Atlanta Journal and the Jacksonville Journal. He was seriously wounded by "friendly fire" while covering the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. For many years he wrote a back-page column for The Miami Herald Sunday magazine on interesting people and places around Florida that drew him quite a following. Floridian author David Nolan said he used to buy the Herald just to read Burt's column. Many of them were collected in book form as Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes (1984), Al Burt's Florida (1997), and Tropic of Cracker (1999). A scholar and advocate of the Florida cracker subculture, Burt was a longtime trustee of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society – an organization that celebrated the life and work of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist who gave the Crackers dignity in American literature. He lived for many years in the picturesque historic town of Melrose, Florida, until declining health dictated a move to the larger city of Jacksonville not long before his death.