Bertram Thomas Combs (August 13, 1911 – December 4, 1991) was an American jurist and liberal‘Breathitt recalled as tough politician’ by Charles Wolfe, published in ‘Kentucky New Era’ October 16, 2003 politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. After serving on the Kentucky Court of Appeals, he was elected the 50th governor of Kentucky in 1959 on his second run for the office. Following his gubernatorial term, he was appointed to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Lyndon B. Johnson, serving from 1967 to 1970.
Combs rose from poverty in his native Clay County to earn a law degree from the University of Kentucky and open a law practice in Prestonsburg. He was decorated for prosecuting Japanese war criminals before military tribunals following World War II, then returned to Kentucky and his law practice. In 1951, Governor Lawrence Wetherby appointed him to fill a vacancy on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Later that year, he was elected to a full term on the court, defeating former governor and judge Simeon S. Willis. Kentucky's Democratic Party had split into two factions by 1955 when Earle C. Clements, the leader of one faction, chose Combs to challenge former governor and U.S. Senator A. B. "Happy" Chandler, who headed the other, in the upcoming gubernatorial primary.
Chandler, who went on to reclaim the governorship, had promised that he would not need to raise taxes to meet the state's financial obligations, but ultimately he did so. In 1959, Combs was elected governor, defeating Lieutenant Governor Harry Lee Waterfield, Chandler's choice to succeed him in office, in the primary. Early in his term, Combs secured passage of a three-percent sales tax to pay a bonus to the state's military veterans. Knowing a tax of one percent would have been sufficient, he used the excess revenue to enact a system of reforms, including expansion of the state's highway and state park systems. He also devoted much of the surplus to education.
Following his term in office, Combs was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit by President Johnson. He served for three years before resigning and running for governor again in 1971. He lost in the Democratic primary to Wendell Ford, his former executive secretary. In 1984, Combs agreed to represent sixty-six of the state's poor school districts in a lawsuit challenging the state's system of financing public education. The suit, Rose v. Council for Better Education, resulted in the Kentucky Supreme Court declaring the state's entire system of public schools unconstitutional. In response, the Kentucky General Assembly drafted a sweeping education measure known as the Kentucky Education Reform Act in 1991. On December 3, 1991, Combs was caught in a flash flood while driving and was killed.
Early life Bert Combs was born in the Town Branch section of Manchester, Kentucky on August 13, 1911; he was one of seven children of Stephen Gibson and Martha (Jones) Combs."Combs Rose to Pinnacle From Plain Beginnings" Combs's father Stephen, a part-time logger and farmer, was active in local politics, despite being a Democrat in a county where a large majority of residents were Republicans. His mother was a teacher, and she impressed upon her children the importance of a good education. Bert's first school was the two-room Beech Creek grade school. When he reached the seventh grade, his parents sent him and his sister to Oneida Baptist Institute in nearby Oneida because its school term was 8 to 9 months long, as opposed to the 5- to 6-month terms at Beech Creek.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 9 Later, Combs and his sister began riding a donkey every day to Clay County High School. Combs excelled academically and skipped some grades, graduating as valedictorian of his class in 1927 at age 15.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 10
Unable to afford college tuition, Combs worked at a local drug store and did small jobs for various residents of his community. In 1929, his mother arranged for him to work at a coal company in Williamsburg and attend Cumberland College (then a junior college). The coal company job did not materialize, but Combs was able to afford three semesters at Cumberland by sweeping floors and firing furnaces in campus buildings.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 11 In mid-1930, he began working as a clerk for the state highway department."Bert T. Combs". Hall of Distinguished Alumni. This was one of several patronage jobs that were usually awarded by the governor, but the Democratically controlled state legislature had stripped Republican Governor Flem D. Sampson of his statutory appointment powers, giving them instead to a three-man highway commission composed of Democratic Lieutenant Governor James Breathitt, Democratic Highway Commissioner Ben Johnson, and Dan Talbott.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 12 This allowed Combs, a Democrat, to secure the position.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 8
Combs worked for the highway department for three years in order to earn enough money to attend the University of Kentucky College of Law in Lexington. While at the university, he was managing editor of the Kentucky Law Journal. In 1937 he graduated second in his class, earning a Bachelor of Laws degree and qualifying for the Order of the Coif, a national honor society for the top ten percent of graduating law students."Kentucky Governor Bert Thomas Combs". National Governors Association. He was admitted to the bar, and returned to Manchester to begin practicing law."Bertram Thomas Combs (1911–1991)". History of the Sixth Circuit It was also in 1937 that Combs married Mabel Hall, with whom he had two children, Lois Ann Combs and Thomas "Tommy" George Combs.Harrison, p. 217
Early legal career and service in World War II Of his law practice in Manchester, Combs later noted: "I had too many kinfolks and friends in Manchester, and they all expected me to handle things as a favor ... Then they'd get their feelings hurt if I charged them. I was taking in a lot of cases, but not sending out many bills."Pearce, p. 58 In 1938, Combs accepted an offer from a law school classmate named LeRoy Combs (no relation) to join his father and uncle's law firm in Prestonsburg.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 16 Prestonsburg was closer to his wife's home in Knott County. Combs' son Tommy had a form of intellectual disability, the result of an injury sustained at birth."Bert Combs Missing, Feared Dead". The Kentucky Post After moving to Prestonsburg, Combs started a class for people with intellectual disability, in part so Tommy could attend the class.
On December 22, 1943, Combs enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army for service in World War II.Harmon, p. 27 He received his basic training at Fort Knox and participated in the Volunteer Officer Candidate Program, which would have allowed him to attend Officer Candidate School (OCS) immediately after basic training. Instead, he was briefly assigned to teach cartography at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland before completing OCS in Ann Arbor, Michigan, joining the Judge Advocate General's Corps, and attaining the rank of captain. On July 1, 1945, he was sent to the South Pacific. He served as chief of the War Crimes Investigating Department under General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippine Islands, conducting tribunals for Japanese war criminals. Upon his discharge in 1946, he was awarded the Bronze Star and the Military Merit Medal of the Philippines.
After the war, Combs returned to Prestonsburg, forming the law firm of Howard and Combs with J. Woodford Howard as his partner.Robinson in Kentucky's Governors, p. 196 He served as president of the Junior Bar Association of Kentucky in 1946 and 1947. Combs often represented coal companies in workers' compensation cases against Carl D. Perkins, later a U.S. Representative, who served as legal counsel for the mine workers.
Political career Combs began his political career with his election to the office of city attorney in Prestonsburg in 1950."Combs, Bertram Thomas". History of the Sixth Circuit Later that year, Governor Lawrence Wetherby appointed him to fill a vacancy in the office of Commonwealth's Attorney for Kentucky's 31st Judicial District.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 20 Combs announced, however, that he would serve only until a new election could be held. In April 1951, Governor Wetherby appointed Combs to fill a vacancy on the Kentucky Court of Appeals caused by the death of Judge Roy Helm. Later that year, he sought a full eight-year term on the court.Pearce, p. 59 His opponent was Simeon S. Willis, a popular former Republican governor who had previously sat on the court. Combs won the election by a vote of 73,298 to 69,379. In George Robinson's oral history, Combs attributed his victory to Willis's advanced age (68) and the fact that many of Willis' supporters assumed that their candidate would win and did not vote.Robinson in Bert Combs The Politician, p. 22
1955 gubernatorial race A. B. "Happy" Chandler, who had served as Kentucky's governor from 1935 to 1939 and was a leader of a faction of the state's Democratic Party, announced his intention to seek a second term in 1955. Members of the anti-Chandler faction scrambled to find a candidate to oppose him. The most likely candidate was Emerson "Doc" Beauchamp, the sitting lieutenant governor, but Beauchamp was not a good campaigner and his ties to Logan County – where politics were dominated by sometimes-corrupt political bosses – gave the anti-Chandler faction pause. Instead, the leader of the faction, former governor and sitting U.S. Senator Earle C. Clements, selected Combs as the faction's nominee, and Combs resigned from his position on the Court of Appeals to enter the race.Harrison and Klotter, p. 403
In Combs' first speech of the primary campaign, he admitted that the state needed to raise $25 million ($ million in dollars) in new revenue and that a sales tax should be considered. Chandler, the more experienced politician, attacked Combs for this suggestion, maintaining that an experienced governor like himself would not need to raise taxes to meet the state's obligations. Combs' speech was also attacked as dry and uninspiring, partly because he read it verbatim from prepared notes. "And you said I couldn't give a speech," Doc Beauchamp later complained to Clements. Hugh Morris, chief of the Louisville Courier-Journal Frankfort bureau, commented that "Combs opened and closed his campaign on the same night".Pearce, p. 64
With little but Combs' inexperience to run against, Chandler portrayed Combs as a pawn of former governors Clements and Wetherby, whom he derisively nicknamed "Clementine" and "Wetherbine". He accused both administrations of wasteful spending, specifically attacking the construction of the Kentucky Turnpike and Freedom Hall as unnecessary expenditures. Some of Chandler's attacks were more personal in nature; he charged that when Clements was governor, he spent $20,000 ($ in dollars) on a new rug for his office, and that Wetherby had used African mahogany to panel his office, instead of "good, honest Kentucky wood".Pearce, pp. 61–62 Though receipts later showed that carpeting for the entire first floor of the capitol had cost only $2,700 and that Wetherby's paneling had been purchased from and installed by a Kentucky contractor, Chandler's charges remained effective at keeping the Combs campaign on the defensive.