Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 17, 1995                   TAG: 9511170076
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LISA K. GARCIA
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

EX-STATE SENATOR DIES

Bird was elected to the House of Delegates in 1947, where he served eight years until his election to the state Senate in 1956. He served in the Senate until 1971, when he decided not to run for re-election.

A pro-agriculture politician, Bird served as chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Mining Committee and sat on the Finance, General Laws and Education committees. He also was chairman of the little-known Commission for Economy of Government Expenditures.

He once told a reporter that passing bills was not what was important for elected representatives of the state.

``I believe the greatest purpose of the Senate is to defeat bad bills,'' he said. ``Many times, I would rather see a bad bill defeated than a good bill passed.''

Bird was chairman of the Senate Education Committee in the 1950s when the state was in the midst of its massive resistance to oppose integration of the public schools.

But as the years passed, Bird's conservative outlook would not appear as rigid.

In fact, he was the Senate's swing vote to keep the state's public schools open and allow integration to move forward rather than risk the complete shutdown of the system.

From 1964-66 he was chairman of the Higher Education Study Commission and helped formulate and sell to his fellow conservatives Virginia's statewide system of community colleges, which later became a model for the country.