Education and Military Service
One of eight children, Cotton was born in tiny Corley in Logan County, Arkansas. He graduated in 1917 from high school in Fort Smith, the seat of Sebastian County.
He then joined the United States Navy and served as the chief commissary steward on the USS Oklahoma off the coast of France. In November 1999, he was awarded for his valor during the Great War the National Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest designation honor bestowed by the French on foreign nationals.
After he was discharged from the Navy in 1919, Cotton enrolled at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he studied accounting for two years. He then went to work for Shipley Bakery in Fort Smith.
In 1929, Cotton wed the former Genevieve Hathorn, who died on December 11, 1963. At the time of Cotton's death, he was married to the former Mae C. Compton (born 1918).
Read more about this topic: William F. Cotton
Famous quotes containing the words education, military and/or service:
“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)