About Bill Gatton

Born and raised in a tight-knit farming family in Bremen, Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, Carol Martin “Bill” Gatton loved agriculture and farm life.

Drawing inspiration from both his parents and his experiences on the farm, Bill acquired invaluable knowledge about entrepreneurship, leadership and the value of hard work. He showed early signs of his strong entrepreneurial streak at the age of six when he approached a local farmer about his interest in buying the man’s farm. A few years later Bill did in fact help acquire a piece of that land, which was put in his older sister’s name, and by the age of 12 he had doubled his investment. On a warm summer day, farm chores completed, you could find young Bill on the side of the road, selling watermelons.

Bill was valedictorian of his high school graduating class and was elected Kentucky’s Future Farmers of America President during his senior year of high school. He then went on to the University of Kentucky, where he graduated in 1954 with a degree in business administration. Bill financed part of his education by working part-time as a sales representative for L. R. Cooke Chevrolet, an auto-dealership in Lexington, Kentucky, foreshadowing things to come. Upon graduating, Bill served two years of active duty as an officer in the Army.

Encouraged by one of his professors from the University of Kentucky, Bill decided to go to the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School for a master’s degree in business administration with an emphasis on finance and banking. Upon graduating in 1958, Bill had many job offers but decided to strike out on his own. He often said, “When I finished graduate school, I had offers from prestigious companies in the East and I almost accepted a few of them, but I really wanted to go into business for myself. I knew if I took a job with one of those firms, I would never leave because the benefits would be so good.”

A year after graduating in 1959, Bill established Bill Gatton Motors in Owensboro, Kentucky, and acquired a Volkswagen franchise, becoming the youngest Volkswagen dealer in the country. He went on to incorporate an additional 10 automobile dealerships in Tennessee, Alabama, and Texas. The automobile businesses gave Bill what he called “seed” money that he used to invest in banking and real estate. From 1981 to 2002 he was chairman and a major stockholder of Area Bancshares of Owensboro, Kentucky, the largest bank holding company headquartered in Kentucky at the time.  Bill also had large stock holdings in a number of regional and national banks. He had significant real estate holdings in Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, and Alabama, from the early 1990’s up until his death.  Bill loved the automobile business but most of his wealth came from banking and real estate.

Bill’s automobile business brought him to Upper East Tennessee in 1967 where he purchased the Chevrolet and Cadillac franchises in Bristol, Tennessee. He enjoyed living in Upper East Tennessee and made it his home for the last fifty five years of his life, but it is important to note that his heart never left Kentucky. He was known to say, when crossing the Tennessee state line on trips back to Kentucky, “the sun just got a little brighter, the grass a little greener, and the flowers more beautiful”. He never forgot his roots and he loved his “old Kentucky Home, far away”.

Over the course of his seven decades in business, Bill had many interests and was very successful. However, making money was not nearly as important to Bill as giving it away, and he built his businesses with this goal in mind. In 1985, he established The Bill Gatton Foundation, with his eye on enabling future generations to succeed. Over the years, he made dozens of gifts, always with a particular focus on education in Kentucky, Northeast Tennessee, and Southwest Virginia. 

To know Bill was to know that his favorite poem was ‘The Bridge Builder’ by Will Allen Dromgoole.  He would get choked up when he read this ode to an old man who built a bridge over a sullen tide for others who followed after him. Being a bridge builder was at the heart of who Bill was and everything he did.

We at The Bill Gatton Foundation are honored to keep Bill’s spirit of generosity and goodwill alive by building bridges to span the tide.