Jim Burgess

Jim & Milt's Bar-B-Q co-founder dies at 82

By Aetna Smith
DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER


Jim Burgess, 82, one of the founders of Jim & Milt's Bar-B-Q, died Tuesday in Tallahassee. He had suffered with Alzheimer's disease for several years.

The restaurant, named for Burgess and friend Milton Johnson, opened in the late 1960s, said Burgess' wife, Olga. It was a side business to the main one he led called Bell Foundation, a concrete-piling and foundation business, she said. The Burgesses moved to Tallahassee from Louisiana in the 1950s to begin the foundation company.

Burgess and Johnson, who also worked at Bell, decided to open the restaurant on West Pensacola Street to cater to Florida State students, said Olga Burgess.

"The building was a warehouse for Bell Foundation, and Jim always liked to barbecue, and Milton did too," she said Wednesday night at a memorial dinner for her husband at Jim & Milt's.

Burgess' six children spent time working at the restaurant - from folding up takeout boxes, to waiting tables to serving ice cream in the now-defunct ice-cream parlor - said daughter Susie Andrews.

"I was going to FSU, and I'd bring over my sorority sisters, and we had to feed them," she said. "My poor Dad never got rich from us. But he loved it. He made sure we were all having fun."

In the early 1970s, Jim & Milt's was sold to FSU football player Del Williams, who was playing for the New Orleans Saints at the time. Since then, the restaurant has had at least three owners, said Burgess' son, Jeff Burgess.

Jim Burgess went on to become a developer and builder, and Jeff now runs Bell Foundation in Port St. Joe.

Burgess graduated from the Louisiana State University School of Engineering and fought in World War II in the Army Air Corps. He was active in the Optimist Club of Tallahassee and the Seminole Boosters.

His son Jeff remembers fondly the man everyone knew as "Big Jim" because of his father's large size. "He was smiling and happy all the time," he said.

The funeral service will be at 11a.m. Friday at Bevis Funeral Home with burial at Roselawn Cemetery.