Francis Earl ‘Cotton’ Everett

Posted on August 21, 2024

Francis Earl “Cotton” Everett, 77, of Dothan, Ala., passed away surrounded by family at his home on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024.

Graveside services were held at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 27, at Ferguson Cemetery in Chipley, with Pastor Ryan Gutowski officiating.

Earl was born number nine in a brood one-shy-of-a-dozen to Herbert and Carrie Belle Everett in the sandhills of Northwest Florida.

His beginnings were humble, seasoned and enriched with the importance of sweat, persistence, perspective and generosity.

Earl, best known by “Cotton” (a moniker most fitting to his stark, platinum blonde hair) cultivated, early on, love for the land in gardening and harvesting, especially tomatoes; appreciation for the wholesome bounties offered in nature through squirrel-stalking with his mutt named Snowball; an appetite for exploration and wanderlust often trekking to the seemingly faraway Alabama bounds of Houston County to visit his sister Audrey; and for prosperity in recognizing the fruits of hard labor and artful tactics, regularly peddling his sister’s boiled peanuts on the town corner and outsmarting the old folk in the local pool hall.

He was fueled by fortitude and diversely equipped to tackle the world.

Earl manned his reins of life to proudly graduate from the Chipola Business School Program in 1965.

Shortly after, he enlisted with the Florida Army National Guard to which he dedicated six years of patriotic duty and honorably discharged as SGT and a decorated sharpshooter.

Following college, he ventured to Perry, Fla., where he embraced the world of business working alongside his brother Don at Phillips Gas Station.

He honed his innate gift of gab and excelled in customer service.

There, he made fast friends with the local mobile home dealer, Jim Graham.