Bill Anderton is the middle of three sons of Dick and Loretta Anderton of Fort Worth. Bill's father was a rancher and dairyman with a large operation in the Handley area of east Tarrant County on land that is now Lake Arlington. Previously, Dick Anderton was a professional rodeo cowboy and bulldogging champion. He was a member of the original Cowboys Turtle Association (forerunner of the Rodeo Cowboys Association). Loretta Anderton was the business manager of the ranch and dairy operation. Previously, she was the Paymaster of Southland Ice (forerunner of the Southland Corporation) and one of the first U.S. Navy WAVES of World War II. Southland bought our milk for their Oak Farms Dairy brand and my Mom and Dad met in the Southland offices while my Dad was visiting on milk business.
Bill grew up in Fort Worth until he left for undergraduate studies at Baylor University and moved to Dallas in 1974. It has been his base ever since while commuting for graduate school and his career. He has lived in Preston Hollow since February 2019 and in Highland Park for the 25 years before that, moving there after 15 years on Turtle Creek.
Bill is a C-level technology executive and research scientist in the field of Information Science. He was the co-founder and Chief Scientist of a national broadband network provider that featured equity investments from Microsoft, Nortel, Lucent, Liberty Media and GE Capital. Bill rised $100-million in private equity for the venture valued at almost $500-million and personally managed the Microsoft and Nortel equity-partner relationships.
In a long career as a senior executive, technology consultant, developer and researcher, his professional associations included Computer Support Corporation, Space Industries International, Harvard Consulting, GE Federal Electric, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force, FAA and NASA.
In 1995, Bill built and operated the industry demonstration of broadband cable modem networks for the U.S. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the CEOs of the ten largest MSOs in the United States. As such, he also provided one of the speeches in testimony to Congress as part of the lobbying effort for the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which was passed, signed into law and opened the U.S. telecommunications market for competition. This 1996 Act led to the explosion of telecommunication advancements in the U.S.
He has served on various boards and advisory committees of his investment partners as well as those of outside organizations.
For several years, Bill did pro bono work for the Texas Center for the Judiciary (an organ of the Texas Supreme Court) serving on the faculty of their College of Advanced Judicial Studies. In his work, he taught Continuing Legal Education courses for the State of Texas district and appellate judges how to use their computers and the Internet.
Bill is the former two-term Congregational President and Chairman of the Board of his church, Central Christian Church of Dallas; at 160+ years old, the oldest church in Dallas.
He is also very active in many charitable causes, not only with financial support but also by providing his time and the use of his technical systems for worthy causes. He personally operates a STEM education website apollo-11.tv and a continuing education distance-learning site for ministers, TransformingTheChurch.org.
Bill is now semi-retired but still runs a small technical development team for a few select clients with interesting and challenging applications in Information Science presenting opportunities for original patentable intellectual property. His website can be seen at https://billanderton.com.
Bill is married to Nancy Anderton, a native of Buffalo, New York, and former Postmaster of the City of Addison, TX. Nancy moved to Texas to take over the Addison Post Office in 1995 as part of her duties as a Postal Executive of the United States Postal Service. A 20-year Civil Service employee, while in New York and the Postmaster of Franklinville, New York, she also served as New York State President of the National Association of Postmasters of the United States. In 1996, Bill and Nancy were both residents of Highland Park and neighbors unknown to each other at the time. They met in a local restaurant and later married in 1997. Nancy retired for a while upon the birth of their daughter, Austin, to be a full-time mom, work as a volunteer and to do charity work. After daughter Austin entered high school, Nancy re-entered the workforce to become Director of a large multi-use community-center facility for a large church in Dallas, a position she held for nine years before the COVID lockdowns forces the closure of the facility.
Bill and Nancy have two children, son Robert Fleming and daughter Austin Anderton.
Son Robert is a former Combat Engineer with the 1st Cavalry Division of the U.S. Army, stationed at Fort Hood. It was Robert's stationing at Fort Hood that was one of the reasons that originally brought Nancy to Texas. Robert was deployed to Kuwait in Operation INTRINSIC ACTION 96-03 when Bill and Nancy began to date. Bill first met the young man who was to become his "bouncing baby boy" upon his return from the Middle East deployment as a 6'4" NFL-tackle-type dressed in desert-camo BDUs and combat boots just having spent six months "blowing up stuff" in the desert training exercises of his deployment with the rest of the 1st Cav. Robert now works for Osborne Concrete of Garland.
Daughter Austin is a 2016 graduate of Highland Park High School, having attended all 12 years in HPISD. Austin is now a graduating senior at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in the Bachelor of Arts program of their School of Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication (ATEC) as an 3-D animation major. Austin also works with her Dad as an SEO specialist and database administrator (DBA) for large GIS systems on two of Bill's development projects.
