Frank R. Lautenberg Papers

Frank Raleigh Lautenberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1924. His parents, Mollie Bergen Lautenberg and Sam Lautenberg, arrived in the United States as immigrants from Poland and Russia. Frank Lautenberg's father owned a small business and later labored in the silk mills, sold coal, and farmed. His father's experience in the silk mills and economic struggles reinforced in young Lautenberg the importance of getting an education. In a 2000 interview, he recalled a childhood visit to a Paterson silk mill: "My father took me in there one time and told me to look around. He said you must never work like this. He said you have to get an education. I was 12; it didn't mean a lot to me at the time. But it must have sunk in, because I did get an education. I didn't want to work and struggle like he did." Because of his family's frequent moves, he attended 13 schools in 12 years.

Following his graduation from Nutley High School in 1941, Frank Lautenberg worked to help support his family. In December 1942, Lautenberg enlisted in the military, but deferred his entry until May. His father had become seriously ill and died in March 1943. Lautenberg entered the Army Signal Corps and was assigned to set up telephone infrastructure in Europe. After serving four years in the army, Lautenberg attended Columbia University on the G.I. Bill and graduated with a degree in economics in 1949. He worked briefly for Prudential Insurance Company until 1952, when he asked his former classmates Joe and Henry Taub if they needed a salesman to promote their newly created payroll firm. He was the fifth employee of Automated Payrolls, Inc., later known as Automated Data Processing (ADP). He became CEO in 1975. By the time he retired in 1982, ADP was one of the largest computer service companies in the world with 15,000 employees. By 2018, it was a multinational corporation employing over 57,000 people globally.

Frank Lautenberg's first contact with politics was as a donor, supporting George McGovern, Edward Kennedy, and other Democrats. He first won election to the Senate in 1982, unexpectedly defeating an established Republican candidate—Millicent Fenwick—at a time of growing conservatism. He won reelection in 1988 against Pete Dawkins, a Heisman Trophy winner and Vietnam War veteran, and again in 1994, defeating Chuck Haytaian. He retired in 2000 after his third term in office, mostly due to the stress of constant fundraising, tensions with New Jersey's other senator Robert Torricelli, and time away from his children and grandchildren. He regretted the decision almost immediately, and when Senator Torricelli, after being nominated by the Democratic Party, chose not to seek reelection due to ethical questions, Lautenberg was nominated by the party in his stead and was thus reelected to his fourth term in 2002 against Doug Forrester. He then won a fifth term in 2008 against Dick Zimmer.

Lautenberg's first big legislative success was in 1984 when, while still a junior senator, he helped establish a federal drinking age of 21. Until then, drinking age was determined by the states, which created "blood borders" where young people would cross into one state to buy alcohol and then drive home intoxicated. The one between New York and New Jersey was particularly troublesome. Jay A. Winsten, associate dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, said in reference to the National Minimum Drinking Age Act that "the estimates are that the cumulative lives saved are in excess of 25,000." This early success laid the groundwork for a series of legislative efforts that addressed transportation and public safety and security issues.

Beyond his support for safer roads, Lautenberg promoted public transportation through increased funding for Amtrak and NJ Transit and was the first senator to sponsor legislation to distribute homeland security funds solely on the basis of risk and vulnerability. He sponsored the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act, which prohibited gun purchases for those on the government terrorist watch list. He was a strong advocate for stricter gun control legislation in general and sponsored the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Bill prohibiting those convicted of domestic violence from possessing weapons. He also introduced legislation to increase penalties for crimes such as carjacking, car theft, and drunk driving.

Additionally, Lautenberg introduced legislation on public health issues. He sponsored the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which provided federal services to patients suffering from AIDS. Even though Lautenberg's mother was a smoker and he, at one time, smoked two packs a day, he was a strong anti-smoking advocate. He went on to support legislation that limited secondhand smoke exposure and curbed the advertising of cigarettes to minors. His efforts led to the elimination of smoking on domestic flights and the prohibition of smoking in government buildings and places receiving federal funding, such as schools.

Lautenberg blamed his father's early death on the conditions in the Paterson silk mills. This early trauma ignited his advocacy for personal safety in the workplace and environmental causes. He took active roles in these issues through his involvement in the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works' Water and Wildlife Subcommittee and in his chairing of the Superfund, Waste Management, and Regulatory Oversight Subcommittee. He advocated for the enforcement and strengthening of both the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, originally passed in the 1970s. He heavily supported the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act in 1986, giving members of the public access to information regarding pollutants in their communities. In 2016, three years after the Senator's death, President Barack Obama signed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act into law.

On June 21, 2001, Lautenberg passed Senator Clifford Case's record for the most votes on the Senate floor by a New Jersey representative. By the time he left the Senate as its oldest member, he was one of its most prolific legislators and the last survivor of World War II remaining in that body. Though he did not have a Bar Mitzvah—as his constant moving hindered his parents from joining a synagogue—Lautenberg's exposure to the Holocaust during WWII inspired his active role in the Jewish community. He established the Lautenberg Center for Immunology and Cancer Research at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem and donated equipment to the Taub Computer Center in Haifa, Israel. In addition to financially supporting institutions in Israel, he was active in multiple Jewish organizations, including serving as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal from 1975 to 1977, on the board of governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel, and as president of the American Friends of Hebrew University. His interest in Jewish causes followed him into the Senate, where he was a primary architect of a refugee bill later to be known as the Lautenberg Amendment, which gave presumptive refugee status to Jewish people from the former Soviet Union. He also attended the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin as a member of Congress.

Lautenberg's health began to decline in February 2010 when he was diagnosed with a diffuse large b-cell lymphoma. He began chemotherapy and made a full recovery by June 2010. He continued his work in the Senate until his death on June 3, 2013 of viral pneumonia. He was survived by his four children, Ellen, Nan, Lisa, and Joshua, from his first wife, Lois Levenson, and by his second wife, the former Bonnie Englebardt, and her two daughters, Danielle and Lara. He will forever be remembered as an outstanding legislator, philanthropist, and advocate for social issues.