James Merrill Jeffords was an influential Vermont leader known as fiercely independent, courageous, low-key, and down-to-earth. He served in state offices for six years before representing Vermont in Congress for 32 years, and he was instrumental in obtaining funding for Vermont Route 279 around Bennington and for the Welcome Center. Born on May 11, 1934, in Rutland, Vermont, he was the son of Marion Hausman Jeffords and Olin Merrill Jeffords, a Vermont Supreme Court Justice and later Chief Justice. Jeffords attended Rutland public schools, graduated from Yale University in 1956 through NROTC, served on active duty in the US Navy from 1956 to 1959, and remained in the Navy Reserves until retiring as a Captain in 1990. After attending Harvard Law School, he was admitted to the Vermont bar in 1962, clerked for Federal Judge Ernest William Gibson, opened a private law practice in Rutland in 1964, served as the county's State Senator from 1967 to 1968, and was Vermont's Attorney General from 1969 to 1973. Elected as Vermont's sole Representative to the US Congress in 1974, he became Senator in 1988, changed from Republican to Independent in 2001, and retired in 2006. In Congress he championed equal access to education and disability rights, co-authoring what became known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, continued that work as Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, supported humanitarian and environmental causes, won the Sierra Club's highest commendation in 2002, co-founded the Congressional Arts Caucus, and consistently fought for funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. After his death on August 18, 2014, President Barack Obama said that he never lost the fiercely independent spirit that earned trust and respect across America and that he voted his principles even when that meant taking a lonely or unpopular stance.