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." 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. Prestonsburg was closer to his wife's home in Knott County. Combs' son Tommy suffered from a form of mental retardation, the result of an injury sustained at birth. After moving to Prestonsburg, Combs started a class for individuals with mental retardation, 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. 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. 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.
Read more about this topic: Bert T. Combs
Famous quotes containing the words early, legal, career, service, world and/or war:
“We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.”
—Henry Reed (1914–1986)
“Courage, then, for the end draws near! A few more years of persistent, faithful work and the women of the United States will be recognized as the legal equals of men.”
—Mary A. Livermore (1821–1905)
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“The woman’s world ... is shown as a series of limited spaces, with the woman struggling to get free of them. The struggle is what the film is about; what is struggled against is the limited space itself. Consequently, to make its point, the film has to deny itself and suggest it was the struggle that was wrong, not the space.”
—Jeanine Basinger (b. 1936)
“There are no accidents, only nature throwing her weight around. Even the bomb merely releases energy that nature has put there. Nuclear war would be just a spark in the grandeur of space. Nor can radiation “alter” nature: she will absorb it all. After the bomb, nature will pick up the cards we have spilled, shuffle them, and begin her game again.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)