Dearly beloved father, son, brother, uncle, and friend, Andy passed away unexpectedly Saturday, March 17, 2018, at his home in Raleigh, NC. He will be missed greatly by many relatives and friends. He was an exceptional person.
Those who knew him are saddened by his passing but are glad he is no longer in the severe pain he had experienced since suffering a traumatic brain injury in January 2011.
He is survived by mother Mary Jo Cole Burnette of Raleigh, daughter, Rebecca Ryann Burnette of Middletown, NJ, brother Timothy Bart Burnette of Raleigh, sister Sheila Rani Allen of Annapolis, MD, sister Sammye Burnette Brown, MD, of Atlanta, GA, and special friends Javier and Susan Santiago of Youngsville, NC. His father, Eugene Burnette, died in 1969 when Andy was age 3.
After elementary and middle school, he was enrolled in the program for exceptional students at Enloe High School where he studied mathematics, Wake Technical School where he majored in Engineering Technology, and North Carolina Central University in Durham where he majored in Mathematics and Computer Science. Later in his career he received extensive training coursework in project management, Cisco certification courses, network design, network troubleshooting, UNIX system programming and administration, information security and government security practices and policies.
Andy’s somewhat unorthodox educational track was enhanced by his early and continuing curiosity about the world in which he lived. He had a voracious appetite for learning about a wide range of subjects. He was fascinated by electricity and performed many experiments, some of which were guided by adults and some of his own “design.” It could have been predicted, and was, that he would select some form of this area of study as his life’s work. Guided by a family friend, he learned to maintain vehicles, including an RV, by age 11 and had overhauled at least 25 cars by age 16.
Andy became a volunteer at a very early age for the Wake County Mental Health Association, assisting his mother, its executive director, in her home office, mastering the operation and maintenance of a mimeograph machine before he was 10 years of age, preparing mass mailings, and helping with events of the association. He often mentioned that this experience was crucial in developing a strong work ethic. He and his brother Tim participated also in the Wide-A-Wake Club, a social group for mental patients in the community and Dorothea Dix Hospital, helping to prepare refreshments, chatting and playing games with members, some of whom felt uncomfortable with adults but relaxed in the presence of children. He felt deeply about the problems of mental patients.
During his adolescent years, he developed a love for the music of Pink Floyd and would drive hours with friends in order to attend a concert.
He was unbending in his patriotism and loyalty to the United States. During his 25 year career he served as an expert in many secure Top Secret projects with Departments of State and Defense. He was completely tight-lipped about all the projects in which he was involved.
His experience in information systems and networking technologies ranged from architecture and design through deployment and operation of large ISP and financial service provider platforms to DoD optical network architecture. Since the early 1980s he worked on fiber-based networking, wireless data transmission, distributed processing systems, and residential broadband. During the 1990s, he deployed large scale distributed computing environment (DCE) services, designed and deployed the network for a leading ISP (AT&T WorldNet(sm)), and consulted on network and system integration efforts, NGN, and security for the US Department of Defense’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) CLECs, financial and defense related data, voice and multimedia networking.
In addition to leading technical efforts, he spent a great deal of time managing customer relationships and developing trust in the solutions his teams provided.
Vice President of Architecture and Information Technology, Facilities Security Officer: Terremark Worldwide, Inc., Miami, Fl. Managed all aspects of security requirements for facilities, information systems and personnel within company according to requirements of US federal government. Manage personnel clearance process for obtaining government clearances. Managed design, development and deployment on numerous classified government contracts.
Functional Subject Matter Expert, Director, Principal Consultant, Advanced Internet Solutions: Telcordia Technologies, Red Bank, NJ;
Design Architect and Technical Lead for large scheduling system for the Transportation Security Agency (Federal Air Marshals).
Responsible for customer relations, resource planning and scheduling, deployment cycles, sub contractor management. Managed numerous areas of technical deployment and engineering including installation, management, and operation of Sun Solaris servers, windows server environment, and application level planning, profiling, troubleshooting and alteration of outside vendor's products to meet the unique requirements of the Federal Air Marshals.
Senior MTS-Network Architect , AT&T Worldnet, Lincroft, NJ: Network Architect: implemented high performance IP network for AT&T WorldNet ISP, including high speed LAN, WAN, network design and implementation.
Network Coordinator, UNIX Systems Research Specialist, NCSU, Raleigh, NC: Integrated and deployed Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) cell for research department in School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Integrated advanced research computing into DCE cell over two-year period.
He spent the years following his brain injury attempting to recover from the effects of the trauma. Despite the severity of his injury, it was often not evident to others that he was disabled, except for a slight limp. He had learned through therapy to compensate for some of the speech function he had lost. He found it difficult to locate resources in Raleigh, NC, that were designed for brain-damaged persons aside from those that were purely medical. He made every attempt to be as active as possible in caring for himself, but it became apparent to him that working at his previous profession was not tenable because of the day-to-day uncertainty of his physical condition. However, he was able to serve as treasurer of his condominium Home Owner’s Association for several months in the past year.
Andy’s final communication to the world was in the form of an e-mail and he ended it, as he typically would, “Cheers….Love.... Andy.”
In lieu of flowers, it is requested that donations be sent to the Brain Injury Association of America, P.O. Box 97984, Raleigh NC, 27613 (919)833-9634.
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