personal

Here's a little personal information about me since many visitors to my website have asked me :

Full Name: Michael Brickey
Birthdate: Saturday, August 27
Birthplace: TN - Holston Valley Community Hospital ( now known as Wellmont Holston Valley
Medical Center )
Birth Time: 7:05 a.m.
Birth Vitals: 7 lbs. 6 oz. & 19 inches long
Parents: Joe & Maxie Brickey
Siblings: one brother, Joe Brickey, Jr., born July 15
Grandparents: Johnnie & Ethel Brickey AND Tom & Olene Sanders

My Dad was the 9th of 10 children (the baby boy of 5 male children, and also 5 girls) and my
Mom was the 3rd of 7 children (6 girls and 1 boy). Both were from very small rural farmlands
in Scott County, Virginia (the Southwest tip of the state near Tennessee, Kentucky and North
Carolina).

I was actually reared in Cleveland, OH, as my parents had moved there when I was a baby for
my Dad to find suitable work (there wasn't much available in Southwest VA or Northeast TN). I
grew up first on the West Side then on the East Side of Cleveland proper (Cleveland Heights),
then we began moving further out into the suburbs of Cleveland. First was Painesville, and
finally Mentor-on-the-Lake in Mentor, OH. When I was 12 years old, we moved back to my
parents' hometown area to help take care of my Dad's parents who were in their 70's (my
Grandpa Brickey had a heart attack and mild stroke and my Grandma Brickey was a diabetic and
was starting to lose her sight and hearing).

I graduated from Twin Springs High School in 1978 virtually tied academically for the top spot in
my Senior Class (with Suzanne Dockery), and also lettered in Football, Baseball, and Track. I
was a class officer, President of the Student Government Association, an officer in the National
Honor Society, Editor of the school newspaper, Asst. Editor & Copy Editor for the school
Yearbook, and also in 8 or 10 other clubs throughout high school.

I scored 1490 on my SATs and was accepted at Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, and the
College of William and Mary. I chose to attend Virginia Tech and started out majoring in
Pre-Med/Biology the Fall of 1978 at 18 years of age. At the end of my freshman year I decided
to change my major to another interest/love of mine, Communications (Journalism) with a Minor
in Psychology. Finished school at Virginia Tech the Spring of 1982 and was working for a fairly
new company called KINKO'S COPIES (when I started in 1980 with them they had fewer than
75 stores).

The Regional Manager and Owner of Kinko's wanted me to open my own store so in 1983 I
moved to Williamsburg, VA and opened a Kinko's across the street from Sorority Row at The
College of William and Mary. After a year and a half, we outgrew the store space, and doubled
the store size. My store in Williamsburg was consistently one of the top performing small-sized
college stores in the nation for the Kinko's Graphics Corporation based in Santa Barbara, CA.

After 8+ years with Kinko's, some friends I had met through the College of William and Mary
who had graduated and moved back home to the Washington, DC metro area, encouraged me to
move to DC to live and work. I found a job as Editor-in-Chief of Lambda Rising Bookstores and
Asst. Editor for Lambda Book Report - a monthly Book Review magazine. I moved into the
Dupont Circle neighborhood of DC in 1988 and lived in DC for almost 11 years. After Lambda
Rising, I worked for the Student Loan Marketing Association (SallieMae) which is a
quasi-government agency/corporation responsible for administering the national student loan
program for college students. I was the Senior Training and Organization Development
Coordinator for Sallie Mae for 5 years. When Sallie Mae closed their DC offices and built a
home office in Reston, VA, I decided to leave the company and went to work as General
Manager for a friend's business in DC called Question Mark. My last job in DC was as General
Manager for Regal Cinemas (the world's largest theater chain) operating first a 13-screen
multiplex Theater in Rockville, MD, and then a 12-screen multiplex Theater inside Ballston
Commons in Alexandria, VA.

In August of 1999, I reluctantly chose to leave DC and move back home to try and help my
Mom out so she could retire from working and so I could help get her on disability as her
Rheumatoid Arthritis had gotten much worse and was unable to be treated properly because of
her job in an industrial sewing factory called Easy Seat which makes soft-side vinyl Coolers,
folding chairs and stadium seats. I started working for Snelling Personnel as a Project
Management Temp in Sept. 1999 and my first assignment was working on the Y2K Project for a
company called Mountain States Health Alliance (MSHA). MSHA was the parent company
which owns Johnson City Medical Center, Indian Path Medical Center, Sycamore Shoals
Hospital, North Side Hospital, Johnson City Specialty Hospital, Quillen Rehabilitation Hospital,
Johnson County Health Center, and Blue Ridge Medical Offices (which are primarily First Assist
care centers and physician offices). In February 2000 I switched over to work on the SMS
Hospital Conversion Project to convert all hospital systems over to one mainframe application for
all facilities within MSHA. Then in January 2001, MSHA hired me from Snelling to be the MSHA
Enterprise Master Patient Index Manager in the Medical Record Services Department to be
database administrator for the 2 million computerized patient database.