Dr. Jacquelyn Holmes Burns is a Laurens native and the founder of Holmes Veterinary Hospital.

She attended Laurens District 55 High School and received her B.S. degree cum laude in Biology from Wofford College in Spartanburg.  She is a 1985 graduate of the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine, where she was inducted into Phi Zeta, the Honor Society of Veterinary Medicine.

Dr. Burns enjoys all aspects of small animal practice, especially internal medicine, general surgery and hematology. She has a special interest in conservation medicine with emphasis on total ecosystem health for sustainable populations of wildlife--both animal and plant communities.  And she has a almost romantic obsessione with ivory-billed woodpeckers and the unique habitat that supports them.  Dr. Burns is also a member of the Eastern Cougar Foundation, an organization devoted to the study of mountain lions and the possibility of restoring them to their original range which included the eastern USA and eastern Canada.

She is married and has a son.  Dr. Burns enjoys reading, gourmet cooking, jogging and cycling as well as all things outdoors, and recently fullfilled a lifelong dream by completing a sprint triathlon.  She is nuts about contemporary music, enjoying everything from Southern gospel to classic rock to bluegrass, country, folk and indie-alt music. She  is a published writer of magazine and newspaper articles, both veterinary and non-veterinary and has won a literary award. 

Dr. Burns is a member of Laurens First Baptist Church and is co-founder of EarthWorks Laurens, a faith-based "green" group, the American Veterinary Medical Association, The South Carolina Association of Veterinarians, The Greater Greenville Veterinary Medical Association, Upstate Forever, the Hub City's Writer's Project and the South Carolina Writer's Workshop.

Dr. Burns has four cats, a beagle-Jack Russel mix, Earl, and two horses. 

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Dr. Bill Suro and his wife Nanci moved to Gray Court from Colorado in March of 2006.  They drove across country with three dogs and three cats, all adopted strays, and have since adopted a new stray dog.  They left behind five children and nine grandchildren and moved to a small home on the rural land when Nanci was raised.  There they have put in a vegetable garden, half a dozen trees and two flower gardens.  They joined Highland Home Baptist Church, the church in which Nanci was raised.

While Nanci was growing up here, Bill was raised in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, went away to college at Penn State and then to veterinary school at Pennsylvania.  After securing his V.M.D. he has spent his whole career in small animal medicine.  Most of this time was spent building a small suburban Denver practice into one of Colorado's largest and most prestigious veterinary practices, with five hired veterinarians.  After selling this practice Dr. Suro was Colorado manager for PetsMart Veterinary Service for several years and then founded and developed a low-cost vet clinic in association with the MaxFund Animal Adoption Center.

The MaxFund is Bill and Nanci's proudest professional achievement.  It still has the same mission as when they started it twenty years ago.  Nanci was Bill's practice manager at the time but the mission--to save injured animals with no known owner--was too compelling. Under her direction (and a little bit of his) this non-profit grew from a few volunteers and a donation jar on a veterinary counter to an organization with two million dollars in real estate and a budget of a million and a half dollars.  Even at this size the MaxFund won the Charity Navigator Four Star Award the last three years in a row for conversion of donated dollars to mission.