Background
Franklin S. "Bill" Billings was born in Woodstock, Vermont on June 5, 1922, the son of Governor Franklin S. Billings.
Franklin S. "Bill" Billings was born in Woodstock, Vermont on June 5, 1922, the son of Governor Franklin S. Billings.
He was raised in Woodstock and Milton, Massachusetts, graduated from Milton Academy, and received a Bachelor of Surgery from Harvard College in 1943. Billings completed the Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Harvard and received his commission as a Second Lieutenant.
Billings served as Speaker of the Vermont House of Representatives, chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court and chief judge of the United States. District Court for the District of Vermont. He was slated for training at Fort Sill when an Army physical uncovered a heart condition that disqualified him from military service. He then moved to Schenectady, New York to work on a General Electric radar project for the United States Navy.
Billings then joined the American Field Service as a volunteer ambulance driver.
He served with the British Eighth Army and the 6th Armoured Division, and earned the British Empire Meda He was wounded at the Battle of Monte Cassino in Southern Italy in May 1944, requiring five months of recovery and recuperation at a United States Army hospital in Italy, then four months stateside.
In 2010 he was awarded the Purple Heart. Billings attended Yale Law School for a year, and then transferred to the University of Virginia School of Law, from which he received a Juris Doctor in 1947.
He then practiced law in Woodstock.
A Republican, he held several elected and appointed offices, including Village Trustee, Town Selectman, Town Meeting Moderator, Assistant Secretary and Secretary of the Vermont State Senate, Executive Clerk to Governor Joseph Johnson, and Secretary of Civil and Military Affairs (chief assistant) to Governor Robert Stafford. Billings also served as Judge of the Hartford Municipal Court from 1955 to 1962. Elected to the Vermont House of Representatives as a Republican in 1960, Billings served from 1961 to 1965.
In the House Billings was one of the "Young Turks," a group of relatively junior members who pursued progressive policies regardless of party affiliation.
The effort to end conservative Republican dominance of Vermont had gone on since the early 1900s with limited success. He was Speaker in his final term.
During his speakership, Vermont conformed to federal proportional representation requirements, moving the state House from a "one town, one vote" body of over 240 members to 150 members elected by district. Billings became a Judge of the Superior Court in 1966.
He was an Associate Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court from 1975 to 1983, and Chief Justice from 1983 to 1984.
In 1984 Billings was nominated to the seat on the United States District Court for the District of Vermont vacated by James South. Holden. He served from 1984 until assuming senior status in 1994, and was Chief Judge from 1988 to 1991. In retirement Billings continued to reside in Woodstock.
He died in Woodstock on March 9, 2014 at the age of 91.
Billings married Pauline (Polly) Richardson Gillingham in 1951. They had four children: III.
Jireh South. Elizabeth; and Annual