Terry McCombs
New Zealand politician
Sir Terence Henderson McCombs (5 September 1905 – 6 November 1982) was a New Zealand politician of the Labour Party, a High Commissioner, and the first principal of Cashmere High School.
Biography
Early life
McCombs was born in 1905 and received his early education at Fendalton School. He was further educated at Christchurch Boys' High School and Waitaki Boys' High School before graduating from Canterbury University College with MSc(Hons) in chemistry in 1929. He won two research scholarships in chemistry and was hoping to obtain a post in the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) but at the time, due to the Great Depression, the DSIR was not hiring any new staff. Instead he was appointed as a teacher at Seddon Memorial Technical College in Auckland in 1934.
Member of Parliament
Following his mother's death, McCombs was selected as her replacement as the Labour Party candidate for the Lyttelton electorate. He was elected and represented Lyttelton from the 1935 by-election until he was defeated in the bitter 1951 election. In 1936, McCombs was appointed to the Canterbury University College Council, and he remained a member until 1947, when he became Minister of Education. From 1938 to 1947 he was a member of the Lyttelton Harbour Board.
From 1945 to 1947 he was Under-Secretary to Walter Nash, the Minister of Finance.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Terry McCombs” as new Zealand politician. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as new Zealand politician. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7701954. VIAF identifies the subject as 5025174228436411670008. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1905, 1982, 1929 and 1934.
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This entry incorporates text from “Terry McCombs” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.