Governor Guy Hunt

Governor Guy Hunt. . Guy Hunt was born June 17, 1933, in Holly Pond, Alabama, to William Otto and Orene Holcomb Hunt. Guy grew up on the family farm and graduated from Holly Pond High School in 1950 as salutatorian of his class at age sixteen. He married Helen Chambers, daughter of Homer Lee and Mattie Talley Chambers. They had four children. After serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, where he earned the Distinguished Service Medal, he was ordained as a minister in the Primitive Baptist Church in 1958. He served as probate judge of Cullman County from 1965 to 1977, and as state chairman of the Alabama delegation to the Republican National Convention in 1976 and 1980. As a reward for his party loyalty, Hunt was appointed as the state director of the federal Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, serving from 1981 until 1985. In 1986, he was elected as the first Republican governor of the State of Alabama since Reconstruction. In his first year in office, he was named one of the nation's top governors by U.S. News and World Report. Governor Hunt was reelected in 199O, but was removed from office in 1993 when convicted of misusing inauguration funds. In 1998, The Board of Pardons and Paroles approved a pardon for him on grounds of innocence. Hunt died January 30, 2009, and was laid to rest alongside Helen in the cemetery of his beloved Mt. Vernon Primitive Baptist Church.