By Associated Press
Columbiana, AL – Former Shelby County Probate Judge Conrad Fowler has died at age 88. Fowler pushed for cleanups of corruption in Phenix City and his home county and led an early move for reform of Alabama's constitution. He had been living at a nursing home in Tuscaloosa and died Monday night. As probate judge and county commission chairman from 1959 to 1977, Fowler oversaw the beginnings of the once-rural county's mushrooming development as a Birmingham suburb. He was the first president of the Alabama County Commissioners Association and served as chairman of the Alabama Constitution Commission from 1970 to 1976. As a lawyer Fowler was a prosecutor in the 1954 Phenix City vice cleanup and later sought to shut down gambling sites in Shelby County. The World War II veteran Marine was wounded in the battle for Iwo Jima and was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 1981.
(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)