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President Johnson Attends Funeral for Lehman, Security Heavy

Dec. 8, 1963 - Final tribute was paid today to Herbert H. Lehman, former Governor of New York, at a funeral service attended by President Johnson and other high officials of the Federal, state, and city governments. (Pictured below, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arrives for the ceremony.) As Mr. Lehman was being eulogized as a “kind and gentle man, fearless in meeting head-on the forces of hate and bigotry,” Secret Service agents stood on the mezzanine level of Temple Emanu-El, their figures silhouetted against the towering stained-glass windows of the largest Jewish house of worship in the world. President and Mrs. Johnson, along with a large party of public officials from Washington, arrived at the temple, Fifth Avenue and 65th Street, just before 1 p.m., the hour at which the service was to begin. In the first pew, with President and Mrs. Johnson, sat Governor Rockefeller, Senator Jacob Javits, Senator Kenneth Keating, Mayor Wagner, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Adlai Stevenson. Just behind President Johnson sat Chief Justice Earl Warren, Associate Justice Arthur Goldberg, Senator Paul Douglas of Illinois, Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz, and Under Secretary of State W. Averell Harriman. Mr. Lehman’s widow, Edith, sat in a pew to the left of the Presidential party. With her was her son, her daughter, and other members of the immediate family.

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