William grew up in Cleveland, the son of Prussian immigrant parents, the youngest of 14 children. The family's original surname was EWERT, but on William's birth certificate, the Clerk wrote EVERETT in by hand above the typed EWERT. That must have been the moment when the family changed their name. William may have been a young athlete in the Golden Gloves boxing organization.

In the late 1930s-early 1940's, he married Theresa Emms in the Cleveland area and had perhaps one to two sons with her. At some point, the family spent time in California where William claimed he worked on at least one Tarzan film with Johnny Weissmueller, though this cannot be confirmed. He claimed a family relationship of some kind with Weissmueller, again unconfirmed. When he joined the Army from Cleveland on 30 Apr 1942, William severed contact with his young family. It appears that son Lawrence was actually fathered by William's brother, Julius Walter Everett. Perhaps this led to the fracture. Theresa eventually obtained a divorce and remarried. Her new husband adopted her children.

William spent WW 2 in the Philippines. Of the four years he spent there in the Army, three were either as multiple AWOLs or imprisoned for those infractions. Because he served his sentences, he was given an Honorable Discharge from the Army. He chose to remain in the Philippines. He spent the next 6 years or so traveling the different islands as a laborer. He formed a significant relationship with Ligaya Latorre which produced a son that he gave the same name as his first son back in the USA. He soon left Ligaya and their baby and formed another significant relationship with Felicitas Palacio with whom he had two daughters. He left that family when the youngest was only 21 days old. At some point, he told Felicitas that he'd had yet another son with a woman in Burma, named, again, the same as his first boy. However, there are no military records that indicate he was ever in Burma, at least not long enough to father a child and remain there long enough to see it born and to name it.

He returned to the USA in 1956 on the USNS General Daniel I. Sultan on a ticket purchased by an organization that supported needy US ex-patriots. After he returned to Cleveland, he formed a fourth family when he married Elizabeth Maier. The couple remained married until William's death. They had four child - two sets of twins.

William had a long history of a swollen thyroid gland. He claimed at various times that it was a Golden Gloves boxing injury or an injury he sustained in a brawl. Eventually, it grew so large that it became a breathing hazard; he had to have it removed, approximately in the 1960s. His cause of death was hepatic failure and azotemia. His Californian and Philippine children never saw or heard from him again after he left them. His four groups of known children never knew about the others until well into their adulthoods.