William Yates Trotter Jr., M.D., a long-time Springfield physician, died on Jan. 17 at his home, surrounded by his wife and sons. He was 90.

Dr. Trotter, known as Yates, was born on Aug. 22, 1930, to Martha (Hayes) and William Yates Trotter Sr. in Monticello, Ark., a small town that he remembered as being populated by colorful characters and brimming with seemingly fantastical events that would animate joyful stories he told his entire life. Though some, including his wife, suspected that he embellished his accounts, Dr. Trotter was inevitably able to produce reliable, objective proof that, indeed, a grade-school boy could eat an entire loaf of bread for lunch or that a carload of Depression-era outlaws could roar down the town ' s Main Street at such a speed that their vehicle was airborne over the Iron Mountain railroad tracks.

After graduating from high school in 1948 — he was class president his senior year — Dr. Trotter attended Washington and Lee University, in Lexington, VA., where he majored in chemistry. In 1952 he entered Washington University Medical School, in St. Louis. While a senior there, he met Janet Steinmetz, a first grade teacher from St. Louis.  The two were married in 1954.

Following his graduation from medical school, Dr. Trotter and his wife moved to New Haven, CT, for his internship and then to Atlanta, where he joined the Communicable Disease Center (now the Centers for Disease Control).  Dr. Trotter worked as a disease investigator with the CDC ' s Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS). In 1958, he traveled to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) to help strengthen its smallpox vaccination program during an outbreak that killed at least 20,000 people.

That same year, Dr. Trotter returned to St. Louis to continue his medical training, serving as assistant resident at Barnes Hospital and, later, as chief resident at City Hospital. In 1961, he moved his growing family to Springfield, establishing a medical practice associated with St. John ' s Hospital (now Mercy).

Encouraged by a neighbor to resume playing the tuba, his high school instrument in high school, Dr. Trotter also learned to play the trombone and joined a Dixieland band composed of local physicians called The Dixie Docs.  He eventually won a chair playing tuba in the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, of which he remained a member until 1986.

He also resumed his high school track and field activities, and, in time, was rated one of Missouri ' s best 50+ runners, once winning a 10-mile Thanksgiving Day race along the Mississippi River in just over sixty-one minutes.  Dr. Trotter was an avid and tenacious handyman, fearlessly tackling building projects in his home and his church until declining health finally stopped him.  He and his wife also enjoyed ballroom dancing and cycling; the couple rode regularly at Wilson ' s Creek National Battlefield in preparation for five different overseas bicycle trips, sometimes joined by one or more of their sons.

An avid genealogist, Dr. Trotter spent years researching his family ' s history, poring through boxes of old letters and visiting county courthouses across the Southeast. This research culminated in his crowning achievement, the writing of two books of reminiscences: one about his grandfather, V.J. Trotter, entitled Granddaddy , and a memoir of his own early life, Childhood Memories From Monticello, 1933-1948 , in which he finally committed to paper the stories with which he had regaled people all his life.

Dr. Trotter is survived by his wife Janet, to whom he was married for 66 years: three sons, Bill (Hope), of Springfield, John, of Brooklyn, N.Y. (partner, Mita Patel), and Jim, of Dallas, Texas; two sisters, Patricia Kirkland (Thomas) of Charleston, S.C, and Martha Kurad of Mobile, Ala.; a brother, Virgil, of Little Rock, Ark; and numerous nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews and cousins. For decades, he also remained close to Amjad Chowdhury, of Reno, Nev., who was the son of his interpreter in Bangladesh and who lived in the Trotter home throughout his education at SMSU in the 1980s.

Arrangements are under the direction of Gorman-Scharpf Funeral Home. There will be a small graveside service for family at Maple Park Cemetery. Memorials may be sent to the Springfield Symphony, or Westminster Presbyterian Church.