Herbert B. Maw
Herbert Brown Maw was a politician and attorney. He served as governor of the State of Utah from 1941 to 1949. He was also a member of the Utah Senate for ten years, serving as president from 1934 to 1938. He made unsuccessful bids for a U.S. Senate seat in 1934 and for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 1936. He also ran unsuccessfully for state attorney general.
Maw was born in Ogden, Utah, on March 11, 1893. He received an LL.B. from the University of Utah in 1916, and both M.A. and J.D. degrees from Northwestern University in Chicago. His education was interrupted by service in the U.S. Army from 1917 to 1919, where he served as an aviation cadet and chaplain.
- For the first year, he trained as an aviator, though he never flew in the war. Instead, he served as a chaplain on the front lines - one of only three Latter-day Saint chaplains serving in World War I - administering to the wounded and dying soldiers and composing letters to their survivors. He was in the heat of battle on numerous occasions. On one occasion he was in an observation balloon that was shot down and had to parachute to safety. On another occasion, he walked out of a room minutes before a shell hit the room, killing everyone in it.[1]
He went on to practice law as well as to teach at the University of Utah from 1923 to 1940, serving as Dean of Men from 1928 to 1936.
During his two terms as governor, he promoted progressive legislation that resulted in a substantial reduction in utility rates and the imposition of regulations to prevent the extraction of ores from Utah for processing elsewhere. Although he supported industrial expansion and favored state versus federal control of social and economic policy, his liberal record on labor and welfare legislation as well as land reclamation cost him a third term in office. He retired to the practice of law.[2]
He married Florence Buehler of Manti, Utah, in 1921, and they were the parents of four children. He died on November 17, 1990. She preceded him in death (1984).
