HERBERT H. LEHMAN

'Herbert Henry Lehman' (March 28, 1878 – December 5, 1963) was a Democratic Party politician from the U.S. state of New York. He served as the Governor of New York from 1933 until 1942, and represented New York in the United States Senate from 1949 until 1957.

Contents

Career

Lehman Brothers

Military and family

Politics

Honors

References

External links

Career

Lehman Brothers

Lehman, born in New York City in 1878, was the son of German Jewish immigrant Meyer Lehman, one of the three founders of the Lehman Brothers investment banking firm. Herbert Lehman attended what is now The Dwight School. A graduate of Williams College (Class of 1899), he became a partner of Lehman Brothers with his brother Arthur and cousin Philip in 1908.^[1]

Military and family

Lehman married Edith Louise Altschul in 1910. Herbert Lehman became a colonel in the U.S. Army during World War I.
The couple had three children, Hilda, Peter, and John. All three served in the United States Military during World War II; Peter was killed while on active duty.¹

Politics

Lehman became active in politics in 1920, and became chairman of the finance committee of the Democratic Party in 1928², as a reward for being a strong supporter of Alfred E. Smith. He resigned from Lehman Brothers upon becoming the lieutenant governor of New York in 1929. He then served four terms as the Governor of New York between 1933 and 1942. Unlike Smith, Lehman was a supporter of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "New Deal" policies and implemented a program in the same spirit in New York. He resigned in the final year of his last term and took up posts connected with refugee aid and relief in the United States Department of State and later the United Nations,² among them as the director general of the UNRRA.
On December 3, 1942, he resigned the governorship when he was appointed Director of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation Operations for the State Department. He served as Director-General of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration from 1943 to 1946.^[2]
Herbert Lehman was the Democratic Nominee for the U.S. Senate in 1946 and also ran on the Liberal Party and American Labor Party tickets, but he was defeated by the Republican candidate Irving Ives in what was a very good year for GOP candidates. Afterwards, he was a Senator from New York from 1949 to 1957. In a special election, Lehman beat John Foster Dulles, who had been appointed to temporarily fill Robert F. Wagner's Senate seat. Lehman then served most of the remainder of Wagner's term, before winning a full term in the Senate in 1950.² Lehman retired from the Senate after his full term, and was not a candidate for renomination or reelection in 1956.^[3]
He was the first, and until the 2007 inauguration of Eliot Spitzer, the only Jewish Governor of New York.^[4] During much of his Senate career, he was the only Jew in the Senate as well. Unlike most of his Jewish constituents, who came from Eastern Europe, Lehman's family was from Germany.
He was one of two senators who was opposed to nominating Mississippi Senator James O. Eastland to be Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. (The other was Wayne L. Morse of Oregon.)

Honors

★ Herbert H. Lehman died in 1963 and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.^[5] That year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously.²

★ Lehman College of the City University of New York is named after him; a bust of Lehman, by sculptor John Belardo, was dedicated there in September 2005.^[6] College dormitories are named in his honor at Williams College, the University at Buffalo, and at Binghamton University.

★ A ship on the Staten Island Ferry, ''The Governor Herbert H. Lehman'', is dedicated to him. However, it was set to be retired in 2005.^[7]

★ There is a Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University. His papers were donated to the Columbia University Libraries and are housed in the social sciences library — which is also named in his honor. Additionally, Columbia has a Herbert Lehman Professorship of government, which is currently held by Mahmood Mamdani. Columbia's sister school, Barnard College, has a building named in Lehman's honor; it houses Barnard's library and some social sciences departments.

★ New York City High School located on Westchester Square in Pelham Bay in The Bronx, New York (est. 1974) also named in his honor.

★ In 1974, Herbert H. Lehman was inducted into the Jewish-American Hall of Fame.

References

1. Life and Legacy of Herbert H. Lehman
2. Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site: Herbert Lehman (1928–1956) The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers
3. LEHMAN, Herbert Henry, (1878–1963)
4. The Vanishing Jew Moss, Mitchell
5. Historic & Scenic Tour: Herbert H. Lehman Kensico.org (Kensico Cemetery)
6. Remembering the Legacy of Herbert H. Lehman Office of Media Relations & Publications of Lehman College
7. Staten Island Ferry Gerber, David Paul and Wayne Whitehorne

External links

★ The Herbert H. Lehman Center for American History at Columbia University, with pictures of Lehman.

★ Lehman's opening speech at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, on The History Channel's Speech Archive