Autobiography

My name is Andrew Joseph Merritt. I am 31 years old and was born February 3rd, 1981 in Tucson Arizona. I was born to my mother, Cheryl Flake, who at that time was in the Mortgage business and my father Dennis Merritt, who was a Tucson Police Officer. By the time I was two years old my parents were divorced. In 1985, my mother met another man by the name of, Tim Barger, who he and his brother Jon Barger owned three jewelry stores in Tucson. Park Avenue Jewelers was the name of their stores, and are still there today. In July 1986, Tim and my mother got married. Shortly after that my mother and Tim bought a house in the Tucson area. In 1987 my mother had my sister, Christina Barger. I went to Thornydale Elementary School in Tucson from Kindergarten to Second grade. Kindergarten is when I started having an interest in Baseball, and so my parents got me into Little League. One thing I do remember at a young age is watching The University of Arizona Wildcats basketball team make the Final Four in 1988. I have been a huge Arizona Wildcat fan since I was about six years old.

During the summer after my Second grade year in 1989, my mother and step-father decided to move our family to Washington State. They decided on a city called ,Bellevue. My step-dad opened his own Jewelry store in Factoria Square Mall called, The Diamond Source. I did not have a favorite baseball or football team at that time since Arizona did not have a baseball team yet, and they had just got the Cardinals from St. Louis for football. I decided to be a fan of the teams in Washington. I have been a big Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Mariners fan since 1989. After that school year was out we moved again to Redmond, where I went to Fourth grade. Also during our time in Redmond, in October 1990, my brother Thomas Barger was born. I also played Little League Baseball. I was selected to play in the Majors, where I would be playing with kids one to two years older then me. I remember one day in fourth grade around Christmas time they had let school out because it started snowing pretty hard. During our bus ride home, our bus got stuck in the snow and could not go anywhere. Luckily the bus got stuck in my neighborhood. The bus driver let the kids off that lived in that area and we walked home. We all thought it was so cool because the snow was up to our knees. My friends and I had snowball fights on the way home. It took about an hour to get home because the snow was deep and we were playing around. By the time I got close to my house, my mom was at the end of the street waiting for me. I was soaked when I got home. Like all mothers, she was worried about what had happened to the bus, because she had called the school to see where I was at. It seems like they liked to move around because once again after that year was over, we moved to Issaquah where I went to Challenger Elementary School for Fifth grade and Pine Lake Middle School for Sixth grade. During this time in school I was also actively playing Little League Baseball again and starting to excel at it. Our time in Washington was short lived though because in 1993 my family decided to move back to Tucson Arizona. I was pretty excited about it because now I was able to see my dad Dennis a lot more then just once a year being in Washington. Now I will be able to see my dad and grandparents more often which I was not able to do prior to moving back. I went to Orange Grove Middle School for seventh grade. I played baseball that year from the school. It was cool because my dad and grandpa were able to go to my baseball games and watch me play. We didn’t stay long because a year later in 1994, my family moved us to Scottsdale.

The Scottsdale area is where I call home and have been for a majority of my life. I went to Mohave Middle School for eighth grade. I Graduated from Saguaro High School in May of 1999. I played baseball my freshman year of high school. High School was a fun time for