William F. Cotton - Extensive Civic Leadership

Extensive Civic Leadership

A Shriner since 1927, he was a member of the El Karubah Temple in Shreveport. Cotton "was a fine man. . . . always the gentleman . . . I respected him dearly," said Ray McLaurin, a fellow Shriner from Alexandria.

Cotton was also president of the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce in 1942 and president of the Lions Club in 1943. He served on the elected Rapides Parish School Board and was a member of Governor Sam H. Jones' War Council, the Industry and Commerce Board, and the National Association of Manufacturers, a trade association founded only two years before Cotton's birth.

Also in 1943, he founded the Better Sire Club in Alexandria in an effort to improve the bloodlines of cattle in this area.

Bill Cotton and Rife Saunders also helped to persuade Governor Jones to establish the originally two-year (later four-year) Louisiana State University at Alexandria. To this day, the Bill Cotton Scholarship is awarded to a qualified freshman at the university.

Cotton and others persuaded then U.S. Senator Russell B. Long, a Louisiana Democrat, to promote what is now Interstate 49 between Shreveport and Lafayette through Alexandria. In 1997, Cotton proposed that the roadway be named the "Russell Long Interstate Highway", but the name has not yet been selected.

When he turned 100, Cotton, a reservoir of energy, was still mowing his own yard, driving 100 miles each week to go fishing, planting pecan trees, and walking regularly. He also held a driver's license until he was 103.

Cotton was grand marshal of the Alexandria Veterans Day parade for several years. Bud Teal of the American Legion, said that Cotton was a member of the organization for eighty-five years.

Services were held at Cotton's church, Emmanuel Baptist Church, in downtown Alexandria. Burial was in Greenwood Memorial Park in Pineville.