William ‘Bill’ Davis Cornwell, Jr.
Award-winning journalist William “Bill” Davis Cornwell, Jr. died unexpectedly of natural causes at home in Suwanee, on Easter weekend, 2017 at age 68.
He is survived by sister, Eleanor Cornwell of Macon; son, William Cornwell III and his partner Hannah Lewis-Rosenblum of Salem, MA; daughter, Elizabeth Temkin, her husband Kris Temkin, and their children Kinsley, Estella, and Henry Temkin of Fort Myers, FL.
Mr. Cornwell was predeceased by parents Mildred Cornwell and William Cornwell, Sr.
Mr. Cornwell’s remains will be buried in a family plot at West View Cemetery in Monticello. A memorial reception for friends and family will be held 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 6 in Decatur. RSVP for the reception to hannahlr@gmail.com. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations to Birmingham-Southern College at http://www.bsc.edu/advancement/index.cfm.
Born in 1949 in Decatur, Bill graduated from Decatur High School in 1967, and from Birmingham-Southern College with a history BA in 1971. Although he had no journalism experience or coursework, he landed a writing job at The Decatur Daily in northern Alabama. Journalism was a good fit for Bill’s enormous writing talents and wide-ranging interests in politics, history, sports, and culture.
He learned quickly on the job and within two years was writing at Alabama’s largest newspaper, The Birmingham Post-Herald from 1973-78. His interest in the history of the South and the civil rights movement led him to publish two pieces on the horrific bombing of a black church in Birmingham in 1963 for The Nation.
He was a reporter for The St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times) 1978-85, where he wrote about local, national, and international events, and was one of the paper’s political correspondents for the 1984 Presidential campaign.
Mr. Cornwell next took jobs as editor for the Anniston Star in Alabama 1985-86 and then as sports columnist for The San Jose Mercury News in California 1986-90. He returned to his passion for politics by reporting from the state capital for The Tampa Tribune in the early 1990s.
Mr. Cornwell subsequently had several jobs that capitalized on his writing and editorial talents, including being an editorial voice for the Agency for Health Care Administration under Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, before he moved in 1996 to Dallas, TX to work for the PR firm Burson Marsteller. He later was hired as the top PR executive for Waste Management in Houston, TX. After leaving there, he moved back to the Atlanta area and then to Fort Myers, where he began writing for Florida Weekly in 2008, first for the Naples and later for the Fort Myers edition.
He continued as a reporter or columnist for Florida Weekly even after he moved back to metro Atlanta, where he resided until his death. His work at Florida Weekly spanned an extraordinary range of topics, from serious subjects like state and national politics, euthanasia, Florida’s system of capital punishment, and the exploitation of Florida’s farm workers, to compelling personal profiles like those of a ventriloquist whose dummy had vanished and of a multimillionaire polo magnate charged with vehicular manslaughter.
Mr. Cornwell’s pithy and vivid writings hooked readers and earned the respect of fellow journalists. He had an eye for absurdity, telling details, and odd juxtapositions. Incisive humor infused his writing and conversation, and he brilliantly used storytelling to make complicated subjects compelling and readable. Although he avoided moralism and sentimentality, Mr. Cornwell had a strong sense of social justice and believed journalists should expose the lies, hypocrisy, foolishness and malfeasance of powerful people and institutions, including politicians of any party or ideology.
Mr. Cornwell won many awards for writing from the Associated Press, the Alabama Press Association, the Florida Press Association, the Florida Society of News Editors, and Sigma Delta Chi. His work appeared in The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Miami Herald, and other publications. Family, friends, journalists, and readers grieve his passing.