Burton B Wright

Born

Burton B. Wright was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on a Friday during an extraordinary year in American history. Lyndon B. Johnson was president, Richard Nixon had just secured the Republican presidential nomination, and the Vietnam War dominated the national news. A new home cost about $26,600, gasoline was roughly 34 cents a gallon, milk about $1.05 a gallon, and a new family car could be bought for around $3,000. The No. 1 song in America was The Doors’ “Hello, I Love You.” It was the world Burton entered—and one that would change enormously during his lifetime.

Burton graduated from Webb School of Knoxville

Burton graduated from Webb School of Knoxville, beginning an academic journey that would eventually lead him to the study of Classical Languages.

Graduated

Burton attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, during a remarkable period of change in the school’s history. Founded in 1749 and long known as one of the South’s most traditional liberal-arts institutions, Washington and Lee had only begun admitting women as undergraduates in 1985. A popular and friendly student he experienced tv the university make the transition from an all-male college to a coeducational campus in real time. The change was significant: applications climbed sharply, academic credentials of incoming students rose, and the university’s social traditions—including its strong fraternity culture—began adapting to a different student body.

Burton and Lisa meet at the University of Kentucky

Burton and Lisa met at the University of Kentucky, where both were pursuing graduate degrees in Classics. Their shared fascination with the languages, literature, history and ideas of the ancient world helped bring them together, but Kentucky gave them something else they would come to love as well. During their years in Lexington, they developed a deep affection for the rolling hills, horse farms, open countryside and animals of Central Kentucky. The Classics may have brought Burton and Lisa together, but Kentucky became part of their shared identity—a place whose landscape and way of life stayed with them even as their lives took them first to Toronto and then across the country to California. Years later, when it was time to choose a place to put down roots and raise their family, those rolling Kentucky hills would call them home

Burton and Lisa earn Masters Degrees from Kentucky

1992 — Burton Earns His Master’s Degree Burton earned his graduate degree in Classics at the University of Kentucky, continuing the study of ancient languages and literature that had become a central intellectual interest. 1993 — Lisa Completes Her Graduate Studies Lisa completed her own graduate studies in Classics at the University of Kentucky. Her interest in the ancient world had begun years earlier; as a high-school student in Fairfax, she distinguished herself nationally in Latin before continuing that passion through college and graduate school.

Got married

Career milestone

After completing his master’s degree at the University of Kentucky, Burton moved to Toronto to pursue a Ph.D. in Classics. Lisa joined him there as they began their married life. Burton remained immersed in the ancient languages and ideas he loved, but during his second year he came to an important realization: he loved the Classics, but teaching was not his life’s passion. Rather than continue down a path simply because he had already invested years in it, Burton was willing to change course. Toronto became an important turning point—the place where one chapter of his intellectual life ended and an entirely unexpected one began. Lisa also began her journey into healing, compassion and providing excellent medical care for others.

Career milestone

A Decade of Innovation in California In the mid-1990s, Burton and Lisa packed virtually everything they owned into a crate and a car and headed west to California. It was a dramatic change—from graduate study in the Classics to the rapidly evolving world of Silicon Valley. Burton became deeply involved in the emerging 3-D graphics chip industry, designing sophisticated graphics technology and helping develop the hardware that brought increasingly complex computer graphics to life. His work resulted in multiple patents and placed him in an industry that was transforming computing, gaming, design and visualization. For roughly a decade, California became home as Burton built a career around solving complicated technical problems and turning ideas into working technology. The subject matter was very different from the Classics, but the qualities Burton brought to it were much the same: curiosity, intelligence, persistence and a desire to understand how things worked.

Became a parent

Burton B. Wright IV (Chet) is born in California

A Kentucky Homecoming

California offered Burton an exciting career and placed him near the center of a technological revolution. But Kentucky had never really left Burton and Lisa. Now with a young son, their adopted home was calling. Years earlier, as graduate students in Lexington, they had fallen in love not only with each other and the Classics, but also with the rolling hills, farms, horses and animals of Central Kentucky. Even after Toronto and a decade in California, the Bluegrass remained the place they thought of as home. In 2005, Burton and Lisa returned to Kentucky with their young son, Chet, and settled on a nine-acre farm in Jessamine County. Their journey together had taken them from Lexington to Toronto, across the continent to California and into the heart of Silicon Valley. In the end, they chose to put down roots where their story together had begun—among the rolling hills of Kentucky.