About Me

01/20/03

 
 

 

 

Welcome to the website of POW/MIA poetry!

Hello, my name is Marsha Burks Megehee.  I am from Picayune, Mississippi and I'm the...........

 

The Poet Warrior !

 

Marsha was born March 13,1945 in  Picayune MS.  Her father was serving in the South Pacific, Army Air Corps  and had already picked out a name for a boy- Ted Lansing. Six months  later the mail finally caught up with him, and he learned he had a daughter who had been born back home in Mississippi.

Marsha is the daughter of  Maj. General Delos H. Burks MS/ANG ret.,Army Air Corps WWII Veteran, former Chief Press Officer National Veterans of Foreign Wars,former state legislator , Deputy Atty. Gen. of MS. , Assistant Adjutant General MS Air National Guard, Asst. Judge Advocate General MS. ANG. who at age 85 continues to practice law in Picayune Ms. at Stewart,Burks, and Carroll. "He gave me a sense of what this country is supposed to be about- that we have the greatest country in the world. . . . . That each of us are standing on the shoulders…of those who came before. That we owe  a great debt to our veterans…that freedom is never free!"

He and Marsha's mother Melva Rester Burks recently celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

Private Joseph Megehee
The Liberty Memorial
Marsha's latest poem about World War 1
 

Marsha has a  brother Michael and sister Gail.

She was married in 1984 to David H. Megehee, rancher, she  has one daughter Lisa, an attorney, who is married and  lives on the Barnett Reservoir in Rankin County Ms.

Marsha lives in Pearl River County MS. where she and her husband David own and operate Circle M Riding Stables  and take care of 35 horses, 15 dogs, and 8 cats. The farm has been in the Megehee family for over 100 years.  The original deed, which hangs on the  wall was signed by President William McKinley in 1902.

 

A former journalist, Marsha spent 15 years as staff writer, editorial columnist and news editor of the Pearl Press, Pearl, Mississippi.

She is a three time recipient of The Congress of Freedom Liberty Award for her patriotic editorials and political satire in her column "The Briar Patch" in The Pearl Press and Rankin County News, under the pen name Burke Bailey.

 

Her hobbies are collecting old record albums, reading American History, and  collecting Native American arrowheads found on the creek where she lives.

 

Marsha became a POW Poet/Activist in 1997, after a series of prophetic dreams about an American POW who said he was alive and wanted to come home.  "I believe my past training as a journalist forced me to check out the dreams, and not to just pass it off as another strange coincidence.  I always told people I had no family missing  in action from the Vietnam War fiasco in Southeast Asia,  at my first National Alliance meeting, I bought a book "More Than Merely Names." When I got home, I showed it to my father and he looked through it, then said , "Marsha, here is your cousin Virgil Grant Stewart." I really was not surprised. It seemed like I was doing just what I was supposed to be doing. My grandfather and his (Virgil's) grandmother  Viola were brother and sister. I never knew he was missing in Vietnam. They had moved to Baton Rouge  when I was a child. I never really got to know him."

 

An avid geneaologist, while researching her father's ancestors, she also learned that her great great grandfather, Pvt. Daniel Burks, a musician in General Jackson's army at the Battle of New Orleans , was a POW aboard a British ship, having been captured during the battle. He had enlisted at Natchez, Mississippi, along with his father and five brothers after their mother died.

     "He was only seven at the time he was taken aboard the ship to be taken to England, but a woman visiting aboard ship felt sorry for the child, and as she left the ship…took him by the hand…pretending  he was her son, allowing him to escape and return to his family.

     Coincidently, Marsha's  webmaster, Junny Jackson in NC,  is a Vietnam Veteran, POW/MIA Activist, and is a distant cousin of Andrew Jackson, whom grandpa Daniel served with  at Chalmette Battlefield.

  "Junny saw a few of my poems in Moonduster, I had never met him, then months later, he sent me an email saying "Won't make you wait for Christmas." I clicked the URL and nearly died…he had on his own, secretly designed a web page for my POW/MIA poetry. I had met Junny on line while doing research on one of my adopted POWs, Gregory Harris, USMC of NY.

     After I became involved with America's POW/MIA issue, a "what if?" crossed my mind, what if all these many years later, one of my six adopted POWs might  be that kind lady's great great grandson, some kind of synchronicity that had come full circle?" Daniel never knew her name.

     Megehee had always believed that the U.S. government had left men behind in Korea and Vietnam, however, raising her daughter seemed to take all of her time. In July 1997, shortly after she bought her first computer, she was surfing and came across Gunny Fallon's site, and a POW Activist was born. I submitted a poem about Danny Entrican  from Mississippi to Moonduster's  Barb Malone……..and my life took a sharp POW/MIA turn.

     "After I became involved in the POW/MIA issue, I met Joe and Mary Milliner, whose son William Patrick Milliner is MIA in Laos. I wasn't surprised to learn that Joe in Kentucky and my father in Mississippi had both been in the 44th Bomb Group, Army Air Corps, during WWII. Just one of those "small world" coincidences. After four years in POW research and writing POW related  poetry, I finally posted on my computer a  small sign saying, "Coincidence is God's Way of Remaining Anonymous."

 

      As the song says, "I Believe There Are Angels Among Us" and I also believe they are saying, "BRING THEM HOME NOW! It's  Time!"

 
   

 

 

 

 

This site was last updated 01/20/03