Difference between revisions of "Max R. Sherman"

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{{Infobox officeholder |name=Max Ray Sherman |image=Max Sherman of TX.jpg |nationality=American |office=Texas State Senator
for District 31 (Panhandle) |party=Democrat |term_start=1971 |term_end=1977 |preceded=Grady Hazlewood |succeeded=Robert Dale "Bob" Price |office2=Texas Senate President Pro Tempore |term_start2=1974 |term_end2=1974 |preceded2=O. H. "Ike" Harris |succeeded2=James P. Wallace |birth_date=January 19, 1935 |birth_place=Viola, Fulton County,
[[Arkansas] |death_date= |death_place= |residence=Austin, Texas |occupation=Attorney
College president |alma_mater=Baylor University
University of Texas Law School |spouse=Gene Alice Wienbroer (married 1961) |children=Two children |branch=United States Army |rank=Captain in Judge Advocate General's Corps }}

Max Ray Sherman (born January 19, 1935) is a former Texas state senator who represented from 1971 to 1977 the Panhandle district encompassing Amarillo and the Panhandle. He was also president of West Texas A&M University in Canyon in Randall County and the dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin.

Bakground

Sherman was born in Vilola in Fulton County in northern Arkansas, next to the Missouri state line. As an infant, he moved to the now ghost town of Phillips in Hutchinson County in the Texas Panhandle. At Phillips High School, he was the student body and class president. He received a scholarship from Phillips Petroleum Company and served as a monitor in a freshman dormitory to pay his expenses in attending Baylor University in Waco. He also sold Bibles door-to-door during the summers. At Baylor, Sherman was elected student body president and designated the "Most Representative" senior male student. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1957 and then enrolled in law school in Austin, where he currently resides. He graduated from law school with honors in 1960.^[1] After graduation, Sherman enlisted in the United States Army and was thereafter commissioned as a Captain in the Judge Advocate General's Corps.^[1]

Legislator and college official

Upon leaving the army, Sherman joined the Amarillo law firm of Gibson, Ochsner, Adkins, Harlan, and Hankins. In time, he became a partner.^[1]

In November 1970, he was elected as a Democrat to state Senate District 31. He defeated the Republican nominee, Malouf Abraham, Sr., an oilman and two-term state representative from Canadian in Hemphill County. Sherman received 37,593 votes (52.8 percent) to Abraham's 33,637 (47.2 percent). In that same election, the Houston Democrat Lloyd Bentsen defeated future U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush, then a departing U.S. Representative from Houston, for one of the two Texas seats in the U.S. Senate.^[2] Sherman served on several Senate committees and was the Senate President Pro Tempore in 1974. During his tenure, Sherman was named "Best Member of the Legislature" by Texas Monthly magazine.^[1]

In 1977, Sherman left the Senate to become president of then West Texas State University. He left the presidency in 1982 to run unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Texas attorney general, a post vacated by Mark Wells White, who instead ran successfully for governor. U.S. Representative Jim Mattox of Dallas won the nomination for attorney general and then defeated in the general election the Republican Bill Meier, then a state senator from Tarrant County. In 1983, for several months, Sherman worked as special counsel in the administration of Governor White, who had unseated Republican Bill Clements of Dallas. In 1983, Sherman was named the dean of the LBJ School in Austin. He retired as administrator in 1997 but retained the chair in state and local government and taught courses thereafter on ethics and government.^[1]

Honors and legacy

When Sherman announced his retirement as dean, the Texas Senate passed a resolution to honor him. At the ceremony, the late Senator Teel Bivins, an Amarillo Republican, described Sherman as "our most distinguished Panhandle resident."^[1] In 1988, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library published Sherman's book, The Future of Texas.^[3] In 2007, Sherman edited the book, Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth with Eloquent Thunder, speeches from the late U.S. Representative Barbara Jordan of Texas.^[4]

In 1998, Sherman was named "Texan of the Year" by the Advisory Committee of the Texas Legislative Conference. In 2000, Sherman, along with Malouf Abraham, Teel Bivins, Texas Railroad Commissioner Ernest O. Thompson, Timothy Dwight Hobart, the founder of Pampa, Texas, and the Amarillo clergyman W. Winfred Moore, was named among the "100 Most Influential Persons of the High Plains" in the 20th century.^[1]

In 1961, Sherman married the former Gene Alice Wienbroer (born c. 1937) of Borger, also in Hutchinson County. The couple has two children. Retired in Austin, Sherman has taken up the hobby of fly fishing.^[1]

References