Bill Cotterell, a long-time senior writer at the Tallahassee Democrat, grew up in Miami and joined the Marine Corps in 1961 after high school.

He attended Miami-Dade Jr. College 1964-66, and worked as a copy clerk at the Miami Herald. He dropped out of college in early 1967 when he got a reporting job with United Press International in Columbia, S.C.

For the next 18 years, he worked in the Carolinas, Birmingham, Atlanta, Miami and Tallahassee. Bill first came to Tallahassee in late 1969 with UPI, but moved to Atlanta in 1974 to cover Gov. Jimmy Carter’s campaign for president. After 1976, he became the wire service’s Southern political writer, travelling the South but specializing in Florida political news.

In 1984, Bill married former Georgia State Rep. Cynthia Fuller of Atlanta and they moved to Tallahassee. A year later, he joined the Democrat as a general assignment reporter but moved to the Capitol bureau in late 1985 – and has been there since, covering state employment issues and politics.

He retired from the Democrat early this year but remains active in the Capitol Press Corps as a freelancer.