| Personal Background Welcome to the page dedicated to the ancestry of the Burge Family. Presently there is just me in the Pacific Northwest area, but I have my parents and a sister who live in the Ohio Valley. I'm a Telecommunications Specialist with a branch of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). I maintain and operate radio equipment ranging any where from HF radio (2 to 30 MHz) 
all the way up to a Ku band satellite system (14,000 MHz) with many
different radio systems in between. I am responsible for setting up and
operating emergency communications at disaster sites using a state of
the art (or at least we are hoping to keep it that way) communications
van that contains all of this equipment in a first responder vehicle
called the MRV (Multi-Radio Van). I thought I was hiring on as just a
radio maintenance guy, but the van also includes computers, telephone
equipment, fiber optics, and broadcast video equipment. Needless to say,
there is a support truck that goes with it carrying additional equipment
and supplies. There are web pages being developed describing the
vehicle, but so far they haven't been posted yet.My background has been in electronics since high school, where I attended a Communications Electronics class at a Joint Vocational School for the last two years. From there I attended Ohio Inst. of Technology for two years studying for a EE degree. After promptly running out of money (tuition nearly doubled the first year) I ended up in the Air Force as an electronic technician working on meteorological equipment, navigational aids, and radar. I lasted 8 years there before they tried to stick me behind a desk. That's when I got out and hired on at FEMA. So now I am part of a traveling communications team setting up disaster field offices (yep, just like firemen we have some slow times). Normally we get an empty building that we turn into an operational facility in a few days. We install our own computer network, telephone network, and some times even our own power systems. We also install all of the cabling associated with this equipment, so the first few days are a little busy (makes you appreciate a nice short 12 hour day). Family Background All of my ancestors, both BURGE and RITCHIE, are from back east. I grew up with my family in the Ohio Valley. We were on the Ohio side of the river, but my parents are originally from West Virginia. There are a lot of steelworkers in my past, living in the area now sometimes referred to as Steel Valley. Things are a little sketchy on my father's line as far as where they came from, but my mother's family was a little easier to trace. They came to the Wheeling, WV area from the southern part of the state. Before that they lived in the Russel County area of Virginia. We think we have them linked all the way back to a James RITCHEY in the 1700s living in Botetourt Co Virginia. Unfortunately the county at this time contained all of the western end of the state and stretched all the way to the Chicago area. My genealogy information is being placed on line as I get the time to convert it all to hypertext. This will make it easier to link up with those possible cousins out there (it's already worked once!). Check back every now and again for updated information. Click here for my Surname Index. Also, please drop me a line (Feedback button below) and tell me what you think of my genealogy pages. |
