I am gaining on the preliminaries to my story. Today I will start with my younger siblings!


LAWRENCE (Larry) ALLEN BURKETT

Larry was born March 3, 1939. This of course makes him closest to my age of the Burkett family. After a 10 year struggle with Renal Cell Carcinoma (kidney cancer) he passed out of this life July 4, 2003, fitting, as he loved fireworks and that holiday. He and I grew up friends and co-conspirators although he was more the conspirator and I was the co (LOL). We shared a room with Jim when we were very young, which was a challenge: bunk beds, no sheets, etc. After Warren left, Jim occupied a bedroom and our younger brother moved in. When Jim left we shared a bedroom next to the kitchen. It had a bare light bulb above the bed and Larry managed to break the bulb and cut below his eye. He carried a scar there as long as he lived. Larry was always a storyteller (some might say he stretched the truth). This served him well as he got older. None of us were particularly religious growing up, though we always went to vacation bible school. Larry changed however. He enlisted in the Air Force but received an early discharge after our dad died. He worked for GE at the Cape for a while. He married his wife Judy at an early age. I'm not sure about dates as I was off wandering in the desert or something. At some time during this period he decided Christianity was calling him. He quit his job and went to work for a Christian ministry. After a period of time he was convinced to start his own ministry and founded Christian Financial Ministry (now Crown Ministry). You can read about all that if you look him up on google or Wikipedia. Our story is somewhat separate from that. He wrote 4 novels and countless books about financing, many of which are still in print. I still follow his budget system (or at least by my standards). He loved golf and we played many times in various places. One of my fondest memories is playing in Aspen, Snowmass and Denver all on one weekend. The only sad thing was that was when the cancer reared its ugly head. After we were finished, he said, Bob, I think I strained my shoulder. He went home and found out he had cancer in his scapula (shoulder blade) that had spread from the kidneys. He had his scapula removed and underwent a bunch of treatments, but he NEVER stopped playing golf. In addition to cancer he had glaucoma, so he made up some rules: He said:

1.Because I can only use one arm, if I can find my ball I'm in the fairway

2. Because I can't see, if I'm on the green it's no more than a 2 putt

Interestingly enough he was quite a good one-armed golfer. I'm proud because I taught him to play! We should all have his sense of humor.

There are many stories I could share and maybe I will elsewhere in this journal, but for now I will close this chapter on one of my best friends and my dear brother. Love you brother

If interested much is written about Larry, or you can contact Crown Ministry in Gainesville Georgia. They have access to most of what he wrote.



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