Oliver B. Combs

West Point, 1954

Be Thou At Peace

Posted by Christopher Touchstone Combs on March 10, 2020:

Oliver Bert Combs, Jr., 87, (known by friends and family members as Skip) passed away peacefully in Annapolis, Maryland on Friday, February 8, 2019. Skip was born in Rockford, Illinois on July 2, 1931, to Oliver Bert Combs and Hazel Beatrice Hissam. He was the younger of two children and grew up in: Rockford, Illinois; Sistersville, West Virginia; and, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. Skip had many exciting stories living with his father who oversaw Civilian Conservation Corps work crews building both federal and state parks across the state of California. He enjoyed riding horses while attending the Culver Military Academy and, according to popular legend, he won the corn-on-the-cob eating contest as a teenager at the Illinois State Fair. From 1950 to 1954, Skip attended the United States Military Academy located at West Point, New York. Among his many accomplishments there, he graduated 237 out of 631 classmates, he sang in the Cadet Choir and he was selected an All American Lacrosse player under the tutelage of Coach F. Morris Touchstone. In June of 1954 he graduated from the academy and married Anne Carroll Touchstone, the coach's only daughter. Skip served in the United States Army for over twenty years before retiring in 1975. His accomplishments included graduating from the Airborne and Ranger schools at Ft. Benning, serving two distinguished combat tours in Vietnam, teaching social science to cadets at West Point, working at the Pentagon in the Office of the Chief of Staff or the Army and attending the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. His numerous awards included the Meritorious Service Medal, Air Medal with Valor and the Legion of Merit. Following in his father's footsteps, Skip settled in California. For the next two decades he worked in a number of career fields ascending to the position of Vice-President for Goodwill Industries in Los Angeles. He also pursued his real talent and passion in life -- singing. He studied opera and sang solos or in choirs at Episcopal and Christian Science churches spread across the Greater Los Angeles area for nearly twenty years. By fate, he returned to the east coast in 2002 to be with family spending eight years in Atlanta, Georgia and another eight years in Annapolis, MD. He is survived by his children: Christopher and Young Combs with their four daughters; Nancy Grim-Therrien with her one daughter; Peter Combs with his four daughters; and, Pamela and Ben Brucker with their one daughter. Skip will be remembered forever for his keen intellect, his sharp and sardonic wit, his beautiful, Irish-tenor voice and his penchant for driving European sports cars and for wearing the most stylish western clothes.

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