on November 4, 2009, at age 98. Flags in the state were ordered lowered until November 14 in his honor. Entrance into politics William Avery's political career started on the Milford Reservoir. "I came right back from college and took over the farm. I evolved as kind of a spokesman for the lower part of the Republican Valley as opposing the reservoir and being in that group I became acquainted with a lot of people over at Tuttle Creek who were opposing Tuttle Creek [Dam]. So when it began to get heated up some, why I knew that group and we worked together rather effectively." What that group was trying to do was stop the Dam from being built. There had been a flood in 1935 and people in the Tuttle Creek area were much more concerned about losing their houses and land opposed to a water shortage. Due to his work in Tuttle Creek, Avery was pushed to run for office in the state legislature. He believed that the local citizens believed they could have better representation, and Avery thought it was his job to fill that void. His opportunity came when citizens from Clay Center, Kansas sought him out to run for the Kansas House of Representatives. Avery said he would do it, as long as he did not have to go through a primary. "They gave a lot of reasons why they thought I should run. I said, "Okay, I'll make a deal. If you will guarantee I won't have a primary I'll probably consider to run, but I don't want to have to campaign at a primary and then possibly campaign in the general election." They came back in about a week and said, "We got it fixed; you won't have a primary." Avery had the advantage of being a Republican running in one of the largest Republican counties in the state of Kansas. He was also a third generation farmer who had attended college and came back to take over the family farm. These two factors helped in his attempt at becoming a legislator. "Clay County is one of the strongest Republican counties in Kansas, I think number one, two, or three, so I didn't even have an opponent in the general election, and I didn't have an opponent when I ran for my second term." Avery did have an opponent in his Clay County