AUBURN – George Cotton, who for nearly a half century ran Seltzer & Rydholm in Auburn, died this week as the result of injuries sustained in a car accident earlier in the month. He was 84.

Cotton died Sunday, 10 days after his car was struck by a tractor-trailer while he was driving across Washington Street. The Lewiston man had remained in the intensive care unit at Central Maine Medical Center with numerous injuries.

Police said Cotton had just fueled his car and was driving across southbound lanes on Washington Street when his car was struck by an 18-wheeler. Emergency crews used hydraulic equipment to free Cotton from his mangled Lincoln.

The wreck occurred the night of Oct. 7. Cotton had retired from Seltzer & Rydholm less than a week earlier.

Cotton grew up in Lewiston and graduated from the University of Maine. Shortly after, he went on to work at Hood Rubber, a division of B.F. Goodrich, in Watertown, Mass. There, Cotton was employed as a laboratory chemist.

After a stint in the Army, Cotton returned to Hood, but soon after accepted a job at the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Auburn. He was swiftly named vice president of production and maintenance in 1959 at Seltzer & Rydholm.

For 45 years, Cotton continued to run the company, winning a string of awards for product quality, sales performance and improvement.

Cotton headed up design, site selection and construction of the company’s expansion to Portland in 1962. Shortly after, he took over as head of all phases of company operations. In 1993, he became president and chief executive officer of the entire corporation, which included as many as five warehouses throughout Maine.

Cotton retired from the company on Oct. 1. He lived on Surry Lane in Lewiston, but also had homes on Peaks Island and Marco Island in Florida, according to his obituary.

No charges were filed in that accident. The driver of the tractor trailer, 44-year-old John Carpenter, of Obetz, Ohio, was not hurt.