KANNAPOLIS — On Saturday, Randall Combs’ family helped him into a wheelchair and took him outside Duke University Medical Center for a little while.

“They have a beautiful garden there,” his wife, Donna Combs, said. “It was the first time he’d been outside in 66 days.”

Combs, a Cabarrus County District Court judge, succumbed Wednesday after fighting an illness attacking him for the past two months.

He died at Duke University Medical Center in Durham at 10:20 a.m.

He was 41.

A well-known Kannapolis resident, Combs entered the hospital June 22 after complications from a liver transplant he had four years ago caused him to begin bleeding internally at a conference in Wilmington.

He underwent surgery and had been listed in critical condition since entering the hospital. But recently doctors began treating him more aggressively, and family and friends hoped for a recovery.

He had periods of alertness, he was breathing without a respirator and therapists got him out of bed.

But on Monday, his health turned for the worse again with an infection in his colon.

“It started wreaking havoc on his system, and there was nothing they could do,” Donna said.

The infection would have required surgery, and his body just couldn’t handle that, a doctor told her Tuesday.

“We just had to let happen whatever was going to happen,” she said.

She stayed up all night with him.

Chief District Court Judge Bill Hamby and other judges and court staff visited with the family at Duke Tuesday evening, after hearing news of his quickly deteriorating health.

The news fell hard on friends, who had held out hope, Hamby said.

“We knew he was still in intensive care ... but we always had a feeling that with just a couple of good weeks he would be on the way to recovery,” he said.

“But every time he seemed to turn a corner, some other problem developed,” he added.

Donna Combs has been by her husband’s side since he entered the hospital and recently celebrated the couple’s 15th wedding anniversary there.

On their anniversary, she called the experience “a roller coaster.” Staying at a nearby hotel, she got up early every morning and stayed near her husband until late each night.

She saw him get better. His resilience gave her hope.

“The doctors were very surprised at how strong and tough he really was,” she said.

The family is “numb” right now, Donna said.

“We’re hanging in there,”she said. “We’ve got a lot of family and friends around us, and that’s helpful. And my daughters (Jessica and Rebekah) are pretty tough cookies.”

They may have gotten some of that toughness from Combs, whom Hamby called a “very courageous, courageous man.”

“He went through challenges that would have overcome most of us many years ago,”Hamby said. “Through his dedication and faith, he constantly did more and went farther than anyone would have thought possible.”

After graduating from Campbell University law school in 1986, Combs practiced law in Kannapolis until he became a District Court judge in February 1998.

As a judge, Hamby said, Combs was dedicated and especially concerned with cases involving children.

“Those are certainly the cases that affected him most, and ... those are the cases he took the most time and care with,”Hamby said.

The Rev. Coy Privette said Combs also was dedicated to his family and faith.

Privette called him “a devoted husband, a father of the first magnitude” and noted that Combs served as a deacon and past chairman of the Board of Deacons at North Kannapolis Baptist Church.

Combs also sang in the choir and had served as director of the Sunday School and Senior Adult department and on various committees, said Privette, the interim pastor.

Combs was a lifelong member of North Kannapolis Baptist, where his parents were also members. Privette served as pastor there for 15 years, arriving when Combs was 3 years old.

Privette baptized Combs, and Privette’s youngest daughter and Combs attended Wake Forest University at the same time, after Combs graduated from South Rowan High School. Later, Privette and Combs worked together in the Kannapolis Bible Teaching Association.

“One of the real joys was watching him mature and become a committed church man and a respected leader,” said Privette, also a Cabarrus County Commissioner.

The judge’s civic service included volunteer and leadership roles in the Chamber of Commerce, Hospice, Meals on Wheels and Friends of the Library.

Combs was a member of the Gideons, and Privette remembers that after his liver transplant, Combs passed out Gideon New Testaments to hospital staff at Duke.

“As I look at Randall’s life, I’ve come to realize — as I’ve realized over and over — it’s not so much the quantity of a person’s life as the quality of his life,”Privette said. “And Randall packed in, in 42 years, a quality life that exceeds a lot of people who live to be 100 years.”

Sgt. Rick Towell of the Kannapolis Police Department has been a fellow church member and friend of the Combs family for many of those years.

He organized a blood drive in honor of Combs in July. The church sponsored the blood drive and has sponsored other events to help the family with expenses, especially Donna’s expenses in Durham.

“The outpouring of concern shown during this time was great help,” Donna said. “It certainly made a bad situation more tolerable and made me proud to be part of such a supportive community.”

Towell said he doesn’t know if a lunch the church planned for Sept. 17 to raise money for the family will go on as scheduled.

He struggled for words to describe the loss of Combs to his family, friends, church and community.

“Right now it’s still kind of a fresh hurt, and I wish I could find some words,” he said. “Right now I wish I could find things to say.”

The funeral will be held Friday at 4 p.m. at North Kannapolis Baptist Church. The family will receive friends from 7 to 9 tonight at Whitley’s Funeral Home.