Photography by Butch Merritt Featured in Upstate Bride Magazine

CONTACT: BUTCH MERRITT, EXT. 2381

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 11/7/2001
(By Lisa Garrett)

PIEDMONT --- Photography by Piedmont native Butch Merritt is featured in the current issue of Upstate Bride, a new quarterly publication currently on sale at newsstands.

Merritt, who is director of the Job Placement and Cooperative Education office at Tri-County Technical College, also owns Butch Merritt Photography. Since 1981, he has specialized in wedding photography and unique children's portraits.

He has extended his photography to include Miss S.C. contestants and those competing in the statewide preliminaries. His credits include Miss Teen SC, Miss Teen NC, Miss SC USA, and the last three Miss S.C. pageant winners. He is donating a portrait of them to the Miss S.C. Museum, set to open later this year in Spartanburg.

Merritt joined Tri-County in 1976 as a career counselor where he worked until 1994 when he assumed the position of director of cooperative education. Currently, he works to identify employment and co-op opportunities for students. Tri-County's cooperative education program is one of the largest in the South Carolina Technical College System.

In 1986 Merritt was honored with the College's Presidential Medallion for Staff Excellence and in 1983 was named one of the leading technical educators by the South Carolina Technical Education Association. In 1990 students inducted him as an honorary member of the Phi Theta Kappa honor society.

He is a graduate of Anderson College and holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Erskine College. He is former chairman of the Western Carolina Regional Sewer Authority and is serving his 16th year on the board.

He and his wife, Kathy, have three adult daughters.
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