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A COLLEGE’S BEST FRIEND Bill Cramer views education as a community’s cornerstone by STEVE BORNHOFT
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ill Cramer’s father was the first Republican elected to Congress from Florida since the Reconstruction Period following the Civil War. William Cato Cramer Sr., first elected in 1954, represented the St. Petersburg area (Pinellas County) in Washington continuously until 1970. His son didn’t get the bug. “Because I grew up with it, I knew that I didn’t want to go into politics,” Bill Cramer said. “I knew about the pitfalls and the toll that it takes on a family.” But, even as Cramer was disinclined to pursue elective office, he was attracted to his father’s penchant for public service. The senior Cramer was the first member of Congress ever to establish
↑ For 20 years, Bill Cramer served as a member of the board of trustees at Gulf Coast State College. In 2005, he received the National Trustee Leadership Award presented by the Association of Community Colleges.
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a local office. He was devoted to taking care of his constituents and, in his district, found himself dealing with lots of seniors who needed help with Social Security matters. In 1979, Bill Cramer went to work at Tommy Thomas Chevrolet, a Panama City dealership owned by his father-in-law. He had married Carolyn Thomas in 1975 following his first year at Harvard Law — the two began dating when both were undergraduates at schools in North Carolina. Cramer was working for a federal judge in Jacksonville when Tommy put the arm on him. Thomas was for Cramer a mentor like his own father — a politician, albeit unelected, who served as chairman of the Republican Party in Florida, and a community servant who made the Salvation Army a personal project. “It was one of those 90-degree turns in life that you never expect,” Cramer said about moving from court filings to car sales, but it brought him into contact with a school that would become his Salvation Army. Cramer earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of North Carolina and believed before entering law school that he would become a teacher. At then-Gulf Coast Community College, Cramer tried on that role, teaching trigonometry as an adjunct. Thomas would soon see to it that Cramer was too busy to moonlight in the classroom, but a relationship had been established. For 40 years, Gulf Coast State College, as it is known today, and Cramer have remained close. “I have always had a keen interest in the college and the pervasive good that it does in our community,” Cramer said. In 1987, Gov. Bob Martinez appointed him to the GCSC Board of Trustees. “It was a way for me to get back into education and to be of service,” Cramer said. “Serving on the board of trustees was a great privilege.”
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Bill Cramer’s association with Gulf Coast State College began when he taught trigonometry as an adjunct instructor. He would soon assume leadership roles at the college, serving as a trustee and member of the board of directors of the college’s foundation.
