“Education is the Cornerstone of Liberty” – Paul D. Coverdell
 Paul D. Coverdell was born in 1939 in Des Moines, Iowa, and his family traveled extensively before settling in Georgia. He attended Georgia State University, then transferred to the University of Missouri where he received a B.S. in Journalism. He served as an officer in the United States Army in Okinawa, Taiwan, and Korea from 1962 to 1964 before co-founding Coverdell and Company, an insurance marketing business in 1965 and going on to serve as Chief Executive Officer of the firm.
Coverdell was elected to the Georgia Senate in 1970 and became a leader and beloved member of this General Assembly, serving as Senate Minority Leader from 1974 until his retirement from the Georgia Senate in 1989. He also served as Director of the Peace Corps from 1989 to 1991, and is credited with much of the organization’s revitalization during that period.
Paul D. Coverdell was elected to the United States Senate in 1992 and served in that body until his death in 2000. With friends and admirers on both sides of the aisle, he was widely recognized within the body as one of its most effective, hard working, intelligent, and devoted members. In his passing he left an unblemished and unsurpassed record of all that is most exemplary in public service to state and country, stated the Georgia General Assembly in House Resolution 47 following his death.
Quick Facts about Paul D. Coverdell:
- Senator Coverdell launched the UGA Agricultural Symposium – a national and annual event.
- As chair of the Senate Agricultural Subcommittee on marketing, inspection and product promotion, Senator Coverdell funded research for food safety that led to further protection for the Georgia peanut program.
- Paul D. Coverdell saw in a focus on interdisciplinary biomedical research an avenue for Georgia business, agriculture, and sciences to not only be improved, but to take a lead on the global research stage.
- In 2001, Michael Adams, president of the University of Georgia, credited Paul Coverdell as the driving force behind much of the construction of the Animal Health Research Center (AHRC) and the funding that lead to the containment of tomato spotted wilt virus.
- In her remarks about the Coverdell memorial in 2001, then-senior vice president for academic affairs and provost Karen Holbrook stated that Paul Coverdell recognized that interdisciplinary research and integration of genomics and genetics will: improve the food supply; help us understand disease; develop novel therapeutics; and remediate the environment, and credited him with many of Georgia ’s advances in these areas.
- Paul D. Coverdell's slogan: "Coverdell Works!"
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