Personal Information

Dr. Combs was born in Meridian, Mississippi and graduated from Newton High School in Newton, MS. He married Carol Hardee in February of 1962 and they lived in Louisville, Kentucky for a little over three years while Leon was a polymer chemist and went to night school at the University of Louisville and Carol was a legal secretary working in criminal law.

When Leon finally determined his professional calling (chemical physics), they quit their jobs and moved to Baton Rouge where Leon accepted an assistantship at LSU and Carol went to work as a legal secretary doing mainly corporate law.

When Leon graduated from LSU, he took a position as Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics back at MSU. Their son Jeff was born in 1967. Jeff graduated from MSU in Industrial Engineering and married and has rewarded his parents with two grandsons, Alan and Jason. Carol worked at MSU as an administrative secretary in several offices(agricultural economics, history, personal secretary to the President, and as administrative secretary to the Vice-President for Student Affairs). In 1992 they moved to Marietta, GA where Leon started a new career in a predominantly undergraduate university after spending one career at a research university. Carol decided to retire from work outside of the home and is loving her new life also.

Dr. Combs has been an ordained Baptist deacon since 1984 and was chair of the deacons at Burnt Hickory Baptist Church(a Southern Baptist Church) for the 1996-97 year. He and his wife are now members of Midway Presbyterian Church (a PCA church) where he has been a Sunday School teacher since May, 2001. He is nationally certified by the USA Track and Field Organization as a track and field official with specialties in shot put, discus, javelin, hammer, and multi-events. He also competed at the masters level in the same events until his spinal problems caused him to have to quit competition. He likes to snow ski whenever he can get to the mountains during snow season. However that too has been curtailed by the spinal problems.

His Temple