Herbert H. Lehman:
A Life Of Public Service

by Duane Tananbaum

"Citizen and statesman, he has used wisdom and compassion as the tools of government
and has made politics the highest form of public service."^
 

Mayer Lehman taught his son Herbert that he had a responsibility
to help others, an obligation to do good works, and Herbert
Lehman learned the lesson well. For most of his life, Herbert Lehman was
heavily involved in charitable and philanthropic endeavors, including his
long involvement with Lillian Wald's Henry Street Settlement, the
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, In 1928, Lehman
began a new phase of his service to others when he was elected Lieutenant
Governor of New York, a post to which he was re-elected in 1930. Two
years later, when Franklin Roosevelt was elected President of the United
States, Herbert Lehman was elected to succeed him as Governor of New
York, and he was re-elected as the state's chief executive in 1934, 1936, and
1938. After ten years as Governor of New York, Lehman moved on ro serve
a larger public when Roosevelt called him to Washington in 1942 to head
the State Department's Ofhce of Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation
Operations. A year later, representatives of forty-four nations elected
Lehman as the first Director-General of the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration. Even though Herbert Lehman was seventy-
 

^ Citation, Presidential
Medal of Freedom,
December 6, 1963,
Herbert Lehman Papers
and Suite, Columbia
University.