A forged birth certificate got him out of Charlotte, and started a journey to define his life
In the early 1950s, when Charlotte’s South End was mill houses and industry, a 17-year-old who lived there but was eager to leave sat down and forged his birth certificate.
He used it to enlist early in the Navy Reserves. It worked, and sent him on a journey that would light a spark to define much of the rest of his life.
Thomas Burgess Jr. died April 21 in Charlotte at the age of 85. He is survived by his brother, John Burgess, John’s wife Mikki, their three sons and his longtime partner Rosalyn Edelson.
Burgess was an author, artist, advertising agent and avid SCUBA diver. His book “Take Me Under The Sea: The Dream Merchants of the Deep” chronicled the history of underwater art.
Edelson told The Charlotte Observer that Burgess had “probably the most creative mind I had ever encountered.” While working for advertising companies, including J. Walter Thompson, Edelson said he spent many of his evenings freelancing art pieces to pay for diving expeditions.
Together, he and Edelson traveled to the Caribbean, Belize and elsewhere to explore the ocean.
But the journey began in Charlotte.
John Burgess said his brother showed off his creativity from an early age. When he was 7, he wrote about being hospitalized and what he found to be poor treatment at the hospital. His father, though, didn’t approve of pursuing art, and so Thomas Burgess made a plan to leave.
The Navy stationed him in the western Pacific, where he worked as a cryptographer and, in his spare time, explored the ocean.
In his book, Burgess wrote that his desire to dive began in Charlotte, when, in 1954, he watched a CBS program that showed footage from a team led by Jacques Cousteau, the famed underwater explorer.
“At an impressionable seventeen years of age, in a tiresome, landlocked town in the South, I was sitting there awestruck,” he wrote.
Professional life
As an advertising director, Burgess traveled and worked on projects for companies including British Leyland, Eastman Kodak and Chevron, for which he made underwater photographs of oil rigs.
“His job was kind of an adventure too,” John Burgess said. “His creativity and his love for diving and the ocean made him kind of become the go-to guy.”
In his spare time, he made freelance art for musicians, diving symposiums and other clients.
He lived in Astoria, Oregon, with Edelson. Though they never married and lived separately for most of their lives, they were partners for 40 years. They lived in San Francisco before moving to Oregon, near where the Columbia River pours into the Pacific.
“We used to say we’d be 80 years old sitting on the porch talking about whether to move in together,” Edelson said.
When they finally did, they continued to spend time on the water. He also used his retirement to write, Edelson said, and draw the occasional political cartoon for the local paper.
Burgess suffered from dementia in his later years and, about six years ago, moved back to Charlotte to be closer to his brother.
‘A good heart’
Mikki Burgess said Thomas Burgess had a mantra: “Never let the truth get in the way of a true story.”
The quote, credited to Mark Twain, exemplified Burgess’ love for adventure and his wanderlust, his family said.
Edelson recalled a diving trip she, Thomas, John and Mikki took together when they were younger. She said the group made a short adventure movie together with some underwater shots. Without an underwater camera, they used a raincoat and dive mask to keep the camera dry.
“He couldn’t be in a place for three weeks and not do something besides enjoy the diving,” Edelson said.
Burgess’ ashes will be scattered at sea. In the introduction to his book, he wrote the ocean and the art that captures it: “This was God’s stagecraft and I soon realized that, in the visible undersea, mystery is wedded to aesthetics. For a young, ocean-struck artist, it was the ultimate freedom and the ultimate visual conquest combined.”
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