Meet Mike Sutton
Mike Sutton is a decorated military veteran whose leadership skills were recognized as making the difference in his team’s ability to respond in dangerous environments.
Mike Sutton moved to Beaufort from South Georgia at the age of five when his father, Robert E. Sutton, a Civil Engineer, was hired to assist in dredging work being done on the then new development called Fripp Island. The Sutton family of seven moved into one of the first homes built on Fripp by Coastal Contractors and became the first year-around family living on the island.
Mike attended Beaufort Elementary on Carteret Street, St. Helena Elementary, Beaufort Junior High School on North Street, and Beaufort High School in Mossy Oaks. His career in the Coast Guard took him all over the world. His life experience includes serving aboard Ice Breaker ships sailing to the North and South polar regions of the world, working search and rescue duty on coastal patrol boats, and on fishery patrols in Alaska. He became the senior instructor and Coast Guard liaison to the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Training Command at Pearl Harbor where he developed and executed emergency response training programs to military commands throughout the Pacific. Upon return to the U.S. mainland Mike was assigned as the response supervisor to the Coast Guard’s National Strike Force, a team that responds to maritime disasters around the world. Mike’s emergency response work not only saved lives and property but protected the environment. He is a decorated military veteran whose leadership skills were recognized as making the difference in his team’s ability to respond in dangerous environments.
After retiring from the Coast Guard in 1999, Mike returned to Beaufort building a contracting business with his twin brother Mark that renovated the Old Bay Marketplace among other assignments. He opened a retail store on Bay Street, married the girl in the store next door, Nan Brown (a native Beaufortonian who owns the store Lulu Burgess) and worked to restore their house on Craven Street. He is an avid sailor and was a world champion windsurfer. He is in the record books as the first U.S. athlete to windsurf above the Arctic Circle.
In 2006 he was persuaded to run for City Council, where in his first election he garnered the largest number of votes of all the candidates running.
