Burt, Alastair

Alvin Victor Burt Jr. (1927-2008), Miami Herald reporter and columnist, was born Sept. 11, 1927, in Oglethorpe County, Georgia but grew up at the family home in Jacksonville, Florida. In later life, he prided himself on being both a native Georgian and a native Floridian. He always described Florida as "home," however, and would immortalize its people and places in his column "Al Burt's Florida."

Burt studied journalism at the University of Florida, where he served as an editor for The Alligator, and worked part-time at the Jacksonville Journal. His first job after he graduated in 1949 was condensing United Press wire service news to be read on the radio. He was hired onto the Miami Herald in 1955. This started him on his 37 year career with the Herald as sports writer, reporter, editor, feature writer, and columnist. Burt headed the Herald's Broward County news bureau, then became night city editor, and then went to Cuba in 1961 as a foreign correspondent. He won the Ernie Pyle Award that year for his reports on the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power. In 1962, Burt became the Herald's editor on Latin America, an assignment that took him on travels throughout the Caribbean and South America. He covered Haiti in 1963 and was expelled when his stories angered dictator Francois Duvalier. On May 6th, 1965, while out on a story in the Dominican Republic, both Burt and Herald photographer Doug Kennedy were severely wounded in a friendly fire incident at a roadside check point set up by the U.S. Marines.

In 1973 he accepted the Herald's offer to become a feature writer and columnist covering Florida. He also authored several books on Florida including "Becalmed in the Mullet Latitudes" (1983), "Al Burt's Florida" (1997) and "Tropic of Cracker" (1999). Al Burt died in Jacksonville on November 30, 2008, at the age of 81.