>because the last names may not be in order. i'm not using an index at this point to select against. and if the user wants names that being with T, then they will come up in the order of Teamster, Thankson, Thompson, Tikiwater, etc etc....

Use order by clause instead of group by. You may have two or more Thompston in your database, but with Group by you will have only one record for all of them.