Help in our time of need. May the peace of god be with you all. Good afternoon. Friends, we have gathered together today to celebrate the life of jim lehrer and to offer comfort to his family who have called this church their home since 1977. On behalf of the congregation of National United Methodist Church, welcome. And its my privilege to welcome and to introduce john obrien. Good afternoon. On behalf of the family, i would like to welcome everyone here today. Id first like to express the family familys gratitude and appreciation for the outpouring of love and support that we have received over the last week. Your calls, your cards, the visits, your beautiful flowers, the food, your support and condolences have meant so much. Knowing the sense of loss is felt by so many relieves the burden and is truly a comfort. Thank you. I want to thank those of you who have traveled from outside d. C. Knowing that you dropped everything to be here with us to celebrate jims remarkable life is greatly appreciated, especially if you came by greyhound bus. We want to acknowledge family members and friends who couldnt be here today particularly jims older brother fred. For many traveling to washington wasnt easy or possible. Just to know that youre all with us in spirit is enough for us to feel grateful for your presence in our lives. We also want to remember jims parents, fred and lois lehrer, their enduring optimism is a signature trait that has been passed on to generations of lehrers, thank you. We want to acknowledge the literally thousands of thoughtful messages and remembrances that have been posted on various Media Outlets over the past week. It has been incredibly touching to read stories from people who didnt know jim personally but felt connected to him through his work, for those many tributes to jim, we thank you. We want to acknowledge the news hour family and thank you for your support over these last days. For jim, daily interaction with news hour colleagues mattered deeply. He valued each and every one of you and your endless dedication and commitment to the highest standard of journalism. Grinding through each day to produce a program that reflects your shared values and extraordinarily high professionalism, its a team effort and jim was so proud to have played on the news hour team. Thank you. We want to thank the staff of the National United Methodist Church, this beautiful venue. We are so grateful for their kindness and assistance in helping us to arrange todays service. Thank you. Wed like to extend a very special thank you to the marine corps for their participation today. Anyone here who knew jim knows how proud he was to have been a marine. The honor that these men and women are bestowing on jim today would have meant the world to them. We want you to know how we appreciate the service to our country and kindness and thoughtfulness to our family. Finally we want to say thank you to jim, whether husband, father, grandfather, fatherinlaw, friend, colleague, marine, he led by example. Every person here was touched by his warmth, his humor, his high standards, his integrity, his decency. His generosity, his capacity for true friendship, and for those of us closest to him, his deep and unquestioning love and support. Jim, through all that you gave us, for all that you accomplished, for all that you were, we thank you. Of course on the news hour my dad was serious, serious about things that matter, as he would say. But in fact, he had such a merry spirit. He was quick to delight and it showed instantly in his eyes and smile. One of his gifts was the way he could express emotion and so plainly tell his family and his friends how much he loved us. And he was able to fully receive our love as well. Today we are left with these huge feelings of love for him and from him and its hard right now to know where to put all that love. So i was drawn to this reading from the meditations before cottage which i would like to share with you now. When i die give whats left of me away to children and old men that wait to die. And if you need to cry, cry for your brother walking the street beside you, and when you need me, put your arms around anyone and give them what you need to give me. I want to leave you something, Something Better than words or sounds. Look for me and the people i have known and loved and if you cannot give me away, at least let me live in your eyes and not in your mind. You can love me best by letting hands touch hands and by letting go of children that need to be free. Love doesnt die. People do. So when all thats left of me is love, give me away. My grandfather has always been a large presence and a source of love and inspiration my grandfather has always been an omni present of love, within the sadness i felt i kept thinking of how grateful he got to see my older brother join marine, and where he is today. Reminding me of a moment i many siblings and i shared with granddaddy several years ago. I feel that it capturing some of the things that makes our relationship with him so special which is why i want to share it with you today. When i was younger, my granddaddy came to visit us in raleigh. We were all sitting around in the kitchen when he got up and told my brother, sister and i that he was going to teach us to march like marines. We jumped up immediately and started to follow him. He shouted out his march cadence as we trailed behind him in as straight of a line as three kids can manage. I remember stretching my legs and listening intently to try and match his stride. I was so little, it took me two steps to match his one, and every time he called out for me to stop with my left foot, i would land on my right. My neck was strained all the way back to look up at him. Being 7 years old, when i realized i couldnt match him personally, i started to jump and fall out of lun. He continued to march with my siblings in circle until i fell back into step. While this may feel like a small moment, as i look back, it exemplifies how generous he was with his time. He had to make sure we all knew how to march. More importantly he knew i knew never to give up, even if i couldnt match his stride at first. It embodies the steady guidance he provided and will continue to provide to everyone at the front of the family, with unwavering purpose. It shows how much i learned and will continue to learn from him, and how much i look up from him. Though ive grown from the small boy, my head will never move. It will forever be looking up to him. I will miss you so much, and we love you grand dad. Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me i once was lost but now am found, was blind but now i see twas grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved how precious did that grace appear the hour i first believed through many dangers toils and snares we have already come twas grace that brought us me safe thus far and grace will lead us me home and grace will lead me home first of all well, first of all, bravo for the bari tone, i think you should volunteer for the Washington National opera. I do believe Amazing Grace is one of the great hymns of the Methodist Church, and the methodists have the best hymns, it is lovely to be here in this beautiful Methodist Church, it reminds me of one of jims most remarkable novels called a special prisoner, a methodist bishop of San Antonio Texas who comes to no good end. I did pull it off the shelf. I have all of jims books, and this is dedicated to megagreenfield who we all still remember and james, that must have been james nash, the elegant man we just heard from. Everybody loved jim lehrer, and i think the reason is this, he certainly for me confirmed something i have always believed and wanted to believe and that is that nice guys finish first, and jim wasnt a quintessentially nice guy. We bask in the interest that he lavished on the people around him and the effort he made to make sure that everything was absolutely right for everybody and the appreciation he also showed for everything that was done for him. In his early years in dallas, jims so called newsroom and if you called him in the morning with a story idea for that night, he would be absolutely thrilled. It was as if he had been offered tickets to the super bowl. He made you feel wonderful about the work youve done for him, so you wanted to do more work. Now, i think james is right, he certainly wanted that staff marching on a step behind him, which of course wouldnt do that. I think he could be a tough task master, being a marine, but the guys on this show were always testing him, particularly early on, pushing him to see how far they could go, and one of them said what is your policy for breaking news, he said you tell me the story, and ill tell you the policy. So they didnt get far trying to push jim around. Of course there was something more than that at work, i am convinced. I know of no one who had a firmer sense of what is right and what is wrong than jim lehrer. It was obvious to him what had to be done, so he did it. No more questions about it. Lets just say he was disciplined without overdoing it. He was ambitious without amorous, he was gifted without guile. He was a golden boy who had no goose to lay golden eggs for him, but he was selfmade. He was never selfconscious. His energies were always focused outward. The zen buddhist idea of not too much, not too little was foreign to jim. It was as foreign to him as the rock garden no matter how much he may have admired it. Jim always gave 25 times more than necessary to the people and projects, i think thats why he checked himself into hospitals every now and then for procedures that enforced rest. The truth is jim had a very big heart, it carried a lot, wars that never should have happened, suffering inflicted in times of good and bad. All of these things weighed on jim, and he had a real feeling about them, never for once, never for a moment were they merely grist for thhis program. This is why he loved literature so much. For him it was a place of retreat, and pose and restoration, and assimilation, for pleasure he read the novels, and certainly novels by all of you, roger and robin, kate, books of tom brokaw, a lot of good books produced by members of this congregation. Once he was going to meet eudora weltley, there was a problem because he and robin were going to do the federal budget and jim had to miss that program. This was unfortunate because jim and robin thought the budget was the basis of government, too seldom covered in the media, much less understood by the voters, but you remember this, robin told him dont worry about this, there will be many chances to do the budget. Only one to meet eudora weldley. More than a muse, she was an alley, she was a compatriot, and to gather, they fashioned a philosophy of journalism that elevated the profession for three generations of americans. Others were important of course but they were in the vanguard. Texas has sent many people to serve the nation, some more happily received than others, ill grant you that, but some have made very important contributions. It must be said on the list of those at the very top, among those who matter the most must go James Charles lehrer and someone else written in certain for a phrase i could find nonto stand beside his name. And now to make l, i know he has michael bechloff, i know he has a wonderful history to tell us this afternoon. Michael. One of the most importt National Figures in american for 40 years, jim lehrer was one of the most important National Figures in life. As we all know he was a great man and a great leader, and a wonderful person. There is no doubt why so many millions of people trusted him so much. And ive never seen a closer family than the astounding kate lehrer, jamie lucy amanda, john, lou, richard and their children. It reminded me of what george h. W. Bush once said. The thing that he was proudest of was that his family still wanted to come home. After ve day in 1945, Dwight Eisenhower went to london and said i come from the very heart of america, his fellow kansasn jim lehrer knew what that meant, coming from kansas and texas grounded in, he had national optimism and idealism, great modesty and decency. When he was reporting on some washington controversy from his background he could take solace from the fact that he knew that much of the country couldnt care less about what the city was so obsessed with. No matter how eminent he became, jim never really changed. He always had that wry sense of humor hinged on fact that especially in politics people do and say strange things. Watching him on the news hour in a serious discussion, if you look closely, you could sometimes see the two corners of his mouth turn up just slightly. He was authentic. When people would ask me what jim lehrer was like, i would say exactly as you see on the screen. He thought of himself largely as a marine. It was no accident he was moved when he was asked to speak at the u. S. Opening of the marine museum. One of his computer passwords was semper fie, he was always someone to be in a fox hole with during a crisis. Jim had perfect manners. He was always quick with a handwritten note. At a party, he was often the first to draw out the quietest person in the room. His interest in buses went back to his early life and showed that he remembered where he came from. He wrote about it in his heartfelt family memoir, we were dreamers. Last week, the museum of bus transportation in hershey, pennsylvania, put up this notice on facebook. Quote it is with Great Sadness we share the news of the passing of jim lehrer. Mr. Lehrer was a great friend to both the bus industry and the museum. He and his brother fred gave money and time to support us and the yellow flexible clipper bus was donated by him, painted in the colors of the small bus line that his family operated after world war ii. End quote. The most important moment in history jim ever witnessed firsthand came when he was a reporter in dallas and was asked to go to love field to watch john and Jacqueline Kennedy arriving in november of 1963. You can see him in the newsreels wearing a pale raincoat. He studied the events of the day for the rest of his life and wrote about them in his novel top down he was endlessly creative, writing plays and noefrls. He wrote so many, once he and robin did a joke video with robin sitting at his desk waiting for the arrival of one manuscript of a new book jim wants him to read. Instead, the delivery man brings one lehrer manuscript after another, and they begin piling up. He was prolific. Together with robin, jim built two Television Programs that are a monument. And when histories of the 20th and 21st centuries are written, he will stand out for moderating all those president ial debates, more than anyone else with such ability and providing americans night after night with the facts and arguments that allowed them to function in what harry truman always called their most Important Role which is citizen in a democracy. Thats what future generations will recall about our beloved friend. They should also remember his mind, his humanity, his bravery, and that great heart. Me and my sister have a reading from chapter 11 from our grandfathers book, we were dreamers. I was 13 on may 19th and turned out to be the best birthday i ever had. I thought so then, and i still do. Our circumstances being what they were, it should have been just the opposite. Like christmas there would be little if anything in the way of gifts. Mom ignored her birthday in january and pop his in march except for a good meal and special playings of alex walk alone. It would be same for me and freddy on june 23rd when it was his turn. Because of the situation it had to be that way. The day began as i expected, all three of them were up before i was and they stood at the foot of the bed and sang happy birthday to wake me up. Freddy brought my clothes as if he were my servant and insisting i use the bathroom. We walked down to mary annes and i had the skys the limit breakfast. I was nearly through when papa started, well, son, how does it feel to be 13 years old. Great, particularly since im a year younger than freddy, just for a month said freddy quickly and on cue. It was our annual birthday joke. That out of the way, pop cleared his throat as if he were about to make a speech, in fact, he was. As you probably have guessed, we dont have anything. Hey, thats okay pop. You dont have to explain. I understand. Its fine. It really is. Next year everything will be all right again. Pop was smiling, there wasnt a hint of remorse or apology in his voice, it was the lead into Something Big and i suddenly realized i should not have interrupted him. As i was saying, we dont have anything physical to give you, not like the glove or the bat. I always got baseball equipment for my birthday because it fell right at the beginning of the season. But we do have something for you. I looked around at freddy. He was grinning real big, so was mom. Pops eye was twinkling and twitching like crazy. What in the world. Tgs not gift wrapped or in a sack or a box. You cant touch it or play with it or throw it or put it on. What in the world. Its a promise. A promise . Yes, son, a promise. A promise that next year, i will take you to brooklyn to see the dodgers play at ebbetts field. I leaped out of my seat, raced around to the other side, and grabbed him and hugged him and hugged and kissed mom. They were both in tears, and so was freddy and so was i. Ebbetts field was hallowed, mysterious, to be able to see pistol pete and peewee, and all of them actually play in person at ebbetts field, well, it was the number one goal in my nonkansas central life. Now, it was going to happen. Pop had just said so. It was a promise. Not a hope. Not a maybe well, not a dream, night or day. It was real. A promise. Only my father could have thought of Something Like that. It takes a dreamer to know one. We stood on the verge of bankruptcy waiting desperately for somebody to come along and bail us out, our futures uncertain and unattractive as any could be, and he was promising to take me to brooklyn, new york, to see the dodgers play baseball. Even in my joy, im sure i must have known the chances of it really coming off were slim indeed but that didnt matter. It was the promise that counted. James baldwin said James Baldwin said one or two earn ones death by confronting with passion the conundrum which is life. I met jim seven christmases ago and his daughter lucy invited me to the family dinner. He drove out to Union Station to pick me up and welcome me. I was blessed to get to know him. Jim was a very supportive fatherinlaw, one time i told him i was thinking of doing some writing. I asked him for some advice. What was the secret. Jim said sit your ass in the chair eight hours a day. Jim was a huge Washington Nationals fan, and he enjoyed the hell out of winning the world series. He would get lower than low when they lost a game, inconsolable, sewer the sure their run was over, and then when they won, he was over the moon. He came to thanksgiving wearing a national sweatshirt he had bought for himself. He still had that wide eyed joy of a little boy in him. Such a great smile. Jim was fully present in all the aspects of his life, with his family, his friends, his marine buddy, his journalist pals, at christmas, he and his darling kate would sit on the sofa together, Holding Hands like teenagers. He could engage in the rarefied heights of a president ial debate and take exquisite pleasure of eating a chili dog at a greasy spoon diner. He was so authentic, he brought his whole self to whatever he did. He could cry. Jim was that mythical creature, the man who felt and understood his feelings and knew how to express them. All those years ago, id watch the news hour and saw a man who exemplified intelligence and integrity at the highest level of public life. When i got to know him, i saw that he really was all that, and so much more. Funnier, saltier, so caring, so human, but integrity is still the word we have heard over and over again this week. The integrity at the highest level of public life. When comes such another. Jim was not a traditionally religious man, but he would understand this. The lord is my shepherd, i shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside still waters. He restore my soul, he lead ethme in the path of righteousness for his names sake. Thou i walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil, thou art with me, they rod and staff comfort me. Preparest the table before me in the presence of mine enemies, thousand anointest my head with oil, thy cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and i shall dwell in the house of the lord forever. Somebody asked the philosopher keanu reeves, keanu, what do you think happens when we die. And keanu says i think the people who love us will miss us very much. S us very much. If you say a word about this i will ll you. The you if you say a word about this, ill kill you. The you in the sentence is me. The speaker is jim, the this is the secret that in the marines his nickname was bambi. Bambi. Military secret. The soft eyes, as you know, and the sweet face. Well, i kept the secret for a while. After a while, i told everybody i saw really. Strangers. But for a while, it was expedient for me to keep the secret as well as suiting my malicious nature because when i was with jim i could make him nervous thinking i could divulge the secret, and he grew. So when we were standing around with a bunch of people, i would for no reason at all say phrases like deer deer or talk of woodland creatures. Or sometimes sing doe, a deer, a female deer. He would look at me menaceingly. But he couldnt do anything. We had a big screen tv, a novelty then. Jim and kate came over and we were giving a tour of the apartment. We came to the big screen tv. Before jim had come, i had rigged the dvr to play a special film at a particular place. Jim asked the question i knew hed ask, what sort of picture does this get. I dont know, i said, lets see. I turned it on at the moment thumper says i think well call him bambi. You should have seen his face then. He knew hed been had. Hes got his revenge eventually but for the most, a deer in the headlights. He was my best friend. A hundred or more in this church will say the exact same thing. He was my best friend, because when he looked at you, you were the only person in the world. You were the only person who existed in his world, the line between his eyes and yours enveloping, loving, he was my best friend. And he was brilliant, and i mean brilliant. People would turn to him for advice, personal advice, professional advice, and the advice was always right, spot on. Moral compass, absolutely perfect. The combination of intelligence and judgment, intelligence and judgment. Judgment without intelligence is fairly useless, and intelligence without judgment is a republican. Three credos, three beliefs guided his life. He believed in life, and he believed in love, and he believed we are responsible for each other. The belief in life, one of the things that brought us to tour knees this past week of life was there was never anyone more alive than jim lehrer, he seized life, he was keen on life, all the things in life, sports and music. Kate gave him lessons, piano lessons. He always wanted to learn to play piano, so he started that. Anything that interested him, and writing. He loved writing, he loved writers. Wrote wonderfully fast moving novels, beautiful memoirs, gorgeous, gorgeous memoirs. A bus of my own, about growing up in the bus business with his dad, and we were dreamers. He loved the lives of others. He was devoted to the lives of strangers. If you heard jims end of a conversation with someone, you could not tell whether he was speaking to a Supreme Court justice or to the kid who parked cars at the restaurant, so democratic was his mind and his soul, and so genuine was his interest in others. He believed in life. He believed in love. He was love. He embodied love. No one loved better. Not indiscriminately. When it was right, no one loved better. He loved principles, he loved his country. He loved marines. He loved his friends. He loved buses, duh. He loved nonsense and language. He said this word wawa all the time and none of us ever knew what he was talking about. It was a noun in such a sentence, i saw wawa the other day, he was driving his wawa to the wawa. He loved his family. Who would not. He loved his family, his three wonderful daughters, jamie, amanda, and lucy. Who showed how wonderful they are this week, this terrible week, especially, and their husbands, their great husbands and their children, their wonderful children. He embraced his family. He held his family enthralled. And kate, and kate. Kate, he loved kate. As no man loved a woman. Kate the woman, kate the wife, kate the writer. Kate the mother. Loved her, admired her. Jeanne and i used to go out with jim and kate every week for lunch when we were in washington, usually to decarlos, always to decarlos. And i used to watch jim look at kate during those lunches, kate saying something and jim was a boy who had met the girl of his life. He was smitten. He was smitten again. He loved his kate. He hated dogs. He could not stand dogs. None of us could figure this out. He wasnt allergic to dogs. He wasnt afraid of dogs. He held dogs in a kind of disdain, the way one animal would do another. I think well call him bambi. He believed in life, he believed in love. He believed we are responsible for each other, and that belief undergirded all that he did in journalism, personal life, everything that we are the same animal. We are the same animal. Humans are capable of frailty and humans are capable of nobility. All the same animal. We are interconnected. And that is why he respected people. He saw the whole picture. No one on the news hour ever walked away from an interview feeling that he was less than a human being, and im talking about crooks and rascals and skro skoun drals and worse, treated by jim as a person. Treated by robin as a person. Treated by judy as a person. It means so much when you see it on television. It gives the world a model on how to treat one another. He saw that we were responsible for one another. Same animal. So the belief in life and the belief in love and that we are responsible for each other. He loved this church. He wasnt crazy about religion, but he did love this church as a home for warmth and gentleness. He would not want us to weep today. He would not want us to weep, though if he were here, i wish, if he were here, he would be weeping more than anybody. He was the biggest cry baby i ever saw. I could make him cry deliberately at the drop of some sentimental nonsense. You see these guys. If i said marine corps band, i would have him in a wash in tears. Hey, jim, remember those days we used to can strawberry jam on the old swing of the old porch, crying of course im just making stuff up. Songs, an odd taste in songs, the beautiful ballad, everything is up to date in kansas city. And odd transportation genera of songs, chattanooga chew chew and the oldie but goody love on a greyhound bus. You have cried but he would not want us to cry today. Life is too important. Love is too important. Love is too important. People are too important. He would want us to know that and believe that. He embraced life wholeheartedly, joyously, full of joy. Wh elogy to yates, he disappeared in the dead of winters which is what jim did, disappeared in the dead of winter, but then the poem rises to a different feeling. And its what jim would have said to us and with this i close, follow the poet, follow right to the bottom of the night with your unconstraining voice, still persuade us to rejoice. What anybody else like to well, if anyone else would like to follow that, please. Its a reading from e cle to everything there is a season and that time to every purpose under the heaven, a time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant and pluck up that which is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to get and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to cast away. A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence, and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time of war and a time of peace. To war and a time for peace. Good afternoon. Jim always thought good afternoon, jim always thought that he was the luckiest guy in the world, and he was. It was a life made from optimism, from good humor, and from an unwavering belief in people. A few weeks ago, he told us the story again of setting off from his Small Community college in victoria, texas. For Journalism School at the university of missouri with only a bus ticket and a carton of cigarettes. He rifd arrived in columbia, missouri, where he had never been and knew no one. Told the admissions officer that he could not pay the tuition, Something Like 85 and of course being jim, he ended the day with a loan and a place to stay. Jim did not go to Journalism School to be a journalist. He went to Journalism School to be ernest hemmingway. Hemmingway had written that being a newspaper man was the best route to fiction writing. A reporter would go places and meet people who would later become the characters in novels and short stories. Jim had already written dozens of short stories while he was working as a night ticket agent at the victoria, texas, trailway station. All of them were rejected. Jim ever optimistic just broke more until he got lucky. But jims greatest good luck came later when after three years in the marines working as a rewrite man for the Dallas Morning News he was introduced to one of the young professional women who lived in his apartment building. They liked to think of themselves as the swinging singles. Two weeks after meeting kate, who was Teaching School and planning her life as a writer, jim asked her to marry him. Jim thought kate seemed to like the idea so the next day, jim, always the optimist told her that he had stayed up late telling everybody about the wedding. Kates response, i didnt mean now. They were married some months later on kates schedule. It was the beginning of a marriage of two strong people, Strong Enough to share drafts of their novels, to argue and get angry and get over it, and also Strong Enough to give each other space so that each could have a full life of Creative Work. As time went on, each jim decision was a Family Decision that included lucy, amanda, and jamie as well. Time to buy a house, a family consensus would be required. Moderate a president ial debate, wait a day until consult with kate and the girls. This is a side of jim the world didnt see, the Creative Work that mattered most to him, as kates partner in building this strong and enduring family. Here are some things that kate wanted you to know in kates words, he could always make me laugh. We would have these surreal conversations when we first woke up in the morning, playing characters. Good morning, this is mr. America. Is this mrs. America . What shall we be doing today. These are two writers creating stories and characters just for fun as the sun came up. And this wont surprise you, again from kate, jim believed in womens equality and family and in work from the beginning. As kate puts it, he was an enlightened man. When they were in their 30s, raising jamie and lucy and amanda, and kate was trying to fit in some time to write, jim made a serious offer he would stay home with the girls and kate could go back to school, get a ph. D. If she would like, and have time to write. It was her turn. It was also jim who found kate her place, a simple, sunny studio overlooking the city where kate wrote the three novels that many of us still keep by our bedside. Finally in kates words and as so many of us have experienced, jim always tried to be kind. He took a personal interest in every news hour crew member, restaurant worker, Grocery Store clerk, veteran, gas station attendant, amtrak conductor, writing about his own early struggles, he said that when his fathers bus line failed and the family had to sell every stitch of furniture and couldnt pay the drivers, it left him with a kinship with anyone who works for a small business. It also left him with an extraordinary generosity for anyone whos struggling and especially for young people. In the evenings in the last few weeks when jim could have talked about the honors he was receiving or the important work he was doing for the president ial debate commission, what he wanted to talk about was his gratitude for his own young people, for you amanda, lucy and jamie, he and kate talked about their hopes that ian and luke would return safely from their world travels, about kate obriens visits they would have loved even if she hasnt fixed every bit of technology in the house. They talked about how proud they were of malcolm and james and olivia. There are so many young people here today for whom jim has provided that willingness to listen, that word of reassurance, that moment of good humor that has made all the difference. Among these lucky people are our four children, molly, will, laura, and liza. On thursday last week, my son will wrote jim a letter of thanks and it ended like this. When i was 23 and putting too much pressure on myself, jim said to me, i think you should give up on selfimprovement and just focus on what you can do with what you have. That conversation helped me get out of my head and into the world. Jim, thank you for making me who i am. You left me and the world changed, better than you found it, which i think was your point, and wherever you are now, i hope you are still curious and still laughing. 25 yea im lou nash and 25 years ago was amazingly lucky to marry kate and jims younger daughter amanda, and this is my daughter olivia. Olivia is going to read the lords prayer and ill follow with a brief word. If the lords prayer is familiar, please follow in and join. Our father who art in heaven, hallowed thy name, the kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever, amen. Jims professional and literary accomplishments are well known. The countless ways in which he positively impacted so many is evidenced by the impressive outpouring today, and all of the support we have. To many, jims world appeared layered, busy, and perhaps even complex. To those closest to jim, he was a straightforward man of principle who loved kate and the family with every fiber. His gift to us was showing the power of acting on three simple principles every day, be generous, be fair, and love your family. In his own words from his 1991 a bus of my own you can hear jims voice helping us remember why the simplest of things can hold great meaning. I would like to spend a week, maybe two, as an inner city bus driver, a real one, put on a uniform and drive a regular run for some small bus company all by myself. I realize there are licensing and maybe other problems to overcome, but im sure there must be some small bus company with some small buses that operate a short turnaround route that would not mind having a substitute driver. I would work cheap. And i could even supply my own cap and ticket punch. Ill be ready when the call comes. We love you, jim. We might have met on november 22nd, 1963, because as the video shown on the newshour is a e h tribute to jim last week, you can see both of us in the jail at dallas that evening as they passed oswald back and forth. We didnt actually meet for another eight years or so. Jim had been, by then, hired as the our Current Affairs coordinator for Public Affairs on the new public television. And i think theyd heard that jim had been the officer whose Marine Company and he might exercise a little control over the too liberal, too progressive, too left wing, too far left image that Richard Nixons white house had of ay the time. Brought fear of richard nixon. Ironically, brought us together and made our careers. But anyway, i went down to nashville where theres a pbs conference and went to the hotel and asked which room jim lehrer was in. And he said gm . I said, no, gm. I he said gm lehrer. Thats how i met him. I got to know a lot about jim and so did those wonderful speakers who preceded me. He cried easily. He said i cry at a bad commercial. As for his relationship with kate, it survived jims discovery when helping kate move out of her apartment that she liked Gerard Manley hawkins andk jim nosaid, you like this . And she said, yes, and dont you know, i hate it. Hat they got along very well after that. That was the beginning for me in nashville of 48 years i make it during which he became my muchamired professional colleague, my business partner. We knew all about each others finances and everything, and, ao many of you said, my closest friend. I got to know about jims hard times when growing up. With the humor and pathos that y went with them. Instance, with my children in london, we had christmas with jamie a few years ago. And jim suggested, why dont we talk tell stories about our most meaningful christmases. Jim and when it came to jim, he said there was one christmas when fred and i discovered the presents that our parents had uf bought and hidden them. And when our father found out that we had seen the presents, he was so furious that he said we couldnt have the presents. But as the state of the parents finances at the time, their present, the two parents, to each other that christmas, was one carton of lucky stripe cigarettes. Each package taken out and lined up on the mantelpiece. The pathos and humor in the kansas city bus lines when the boys would ride with whichever parent wasasif the riding the b. And if there was enough money in the ticket box at the end of the bus, the father would say particularly, come on, boys, the sky is the limit. And theyd go and have hamburgers. If there werent enough money in the ticket box, they didnt have hamburgers, and they had very, very lean times. All that bred in jim, not res t resentment or fearfulness of life but it bred courage and empathy and i learned how jen rur generous, how funny, how morally sensitive he was. As alex, the young friend of thd lehrers and mine, the son of another close friend, his father robert, he said jim radiated a kind of infectious joy, which is a good description of jim. Jim helped me with my writing. To stick to it when i was havinw trouble. He provided the title for my first memoir, word struck. All these qualities shaped the journalist, the persistence. Sitting beside Margaret Thatchet during an interview, he was closer to her than i was, and she reached over and she tapped him on the knee and said, young man, you keep asking me that question, im not going to answer it. The way he persisted with bill clinton, president clinton on that awful day when he woke up, jim, knowing that the president ial interview had been scheduled andmy reading in the washington post, oh, my god, theres this story of a sexual relationship with an intern and the president lying about it . The way he spoke to clinton, this, too was rerun recently. Asking him six or seveny y sev sequential questions to narrow clinton down with, just making sure i understand exactly, mr. President. Let me see. Tell me again. A did you or did you not lie about this . Anyway, about the central fact of it, our people in the officee afterwards said you dont lie to jim lehrer. He was politically neutral in public. He did not vote. He wasnt registered to vote, and part of that sprang from his local journalism background where the people youre reporting on are the people youre mixing with all the time, and you live around and among the people you covered. All that his preparation for fae that, his fairness, his determination to be fair, and not to reveal his own biases and prejudices are all wrapped up in his now famous ten principles of journalism. When he acquired betsy, the bus of the exact make and model that his parents used in their little bus line, we were a number of us friends with him for the weekend in west virginia, and he took us for a ride in the bus. And betsy would not turn right. Betsy would only turn left. And i think to this day betsy was trying to out him. Jim had a group of marine friends, retired marines, but always marines, not former marines, of all ranks. We called them the marine geezers. At one such meeting, i dont know, 20, 25 of his marine buddies were there. Un at and he asked them, which how many of you have a gun at home . And only one of the whole group raised his hand, and he said, well, its a kind of antique pistol i was given as a present. So jim, i thought that was very illusterative of jims attitude. If youll notice on the tribut invitations to this service, it said one of the things that one could make a contribution to is the brady effort against gun violence. Jims generosity was extraordinary. Not only did any time you sit down, sat down with him have to fight him for the check, but hes would often say, echoing his father, hey come on. The skys the limit. Lets enjoy this. I just give you one little example of jims kind of automatic reflexive generosity. I told him about my young brother michael who had been working for years and years on a novel. And finally, it was finished, and the publisher agreed to publish it if michael contributed some money to the publishing. And i rang jim as i did for advice all the time, and i said, is this ethical . Is this he said its done all the time now, and ill pay half of it. After a long deliberation, i became a u. S. Citizen. Actually, a dual citizen. Canadian Parliament Years ago passed a law saying if a canadian became an american citizen, he would still be a canadian citizen. And i think in that long consideration, it was the American Values that jim represent represented and lived by that finally pushed me over the edge. Values that in the recent cnn ld interview, he deplored seeing so mocked, so flouted and so hard for modern journalists to defend in the current climate of politics in journalism. And he sounded in that interview, which may have been the last public thing he did, angrier and more committed than i recall ever hearing him before. He was furious at what is happening in the public estate in this country. Back in the 1960s, i was seven years with nbc, and i reported d often for the brinkley report which was popular in the 60s. And it intrigued me that chet ge and davidac at the end of the program said good night to each other. One in washington, one in new york. I dont recall ever actually raising this, but jim and i sorted drifted into sort of starting to do prthat. And at the end of the program, if he were during that part thad night, he would say, good nightd robin, and i would say, and now i say it for the last time, good night, jim. Dad would have loved this w celebration, and he would have let us, all of us, know it. Omfob as others have said today, he f was unusually comfortable with his emotions. Feeling them, expressing them. T the tears that flowed freely were not so much tears of sadness as they were tears of s being profoundly moved by things, a song, a story about a. Person who tried and succeeded n at something. A story about someone who offered a kindness. A person who struggled, who suffered a loss. Sometimes he would cry simply because he was happy to see o someone he loved. A friend, a grandchild, a soninlaw, a daughter. His beloved kate. He felt deeply. He loved fiercely. And he took nothing for granted. He was ever grateful. The day after we celebrated his birthday this past may, he saidl this in anaw email to my mother his grandkids, his soninlaw er and to jamie, amanda and me. My dear family, i remain in a statete of extraordinary pleasu that goes way, way beyond anything i could ever have imagined. Always cherish what each of you did for and during what was one of the most memorable experiences in my 85yearold l life. I only wish i could freeze it all in place as a forever reminder of what real love amonr real people can be. My love for you all has no bounds. M to be there is no one more fortunate than i am to be your dad, granddaddy, jim. Thank you for making that so, dad, granddaddy, jim. You youve just heard 15 memoriei andm readings about and by jim lehrer that illustrate his life of authenticity and honesty and love and humor. Thodis when we were members of the congregation of this very Methodist Church in the 1970s, my sister amanda remembers asion sitting next to him on a rare occasion they actually came to a service and quietly handing her a Church Donation slip with thep words sdoughnuts written in all caps. That me she knew that meant that after the service, there would be doughnuts. A sunday dallas family treat thn in dallas and continued through our childhood up here and in more recent years on the frequent occasions he would slip up to the local giant for a dozen chocolate glazed doughnuts. Onors before the military honors that are the final moments in todays service, the family wishes to chvite everyone to join us in the great hall of the church er through that entry door there for chocolate doughnuts and other of dads favorite foods. Suer the course of this week, as we began to come to terms with o the enormity of this sudden loss, we take solace in keeping close to our hearts dads ever. Optimistic view of life and all its possibilities. So, as my father often said and ended almost every email that he wrote, onward. Id, onwa from the halls of montezuma to the shores of tripoli we fight our countrys battle s in the air, on land and sea first to fight for right and freedom and to keep our honor clean we are proud to claim the title of United States marines programming for the next several hours. Next, the Supreme Court hears an oral argument in the 2013 new jersey bridgegate case and methods used to convict two people. After that, a forum on the trump administrations transportation and infrastructure policy. Then the fbis jtab and assistant attorney general talk about Security Issues and priorities for their agencies. The medal of honor at iwo jima consumes 80 of the medals of honor that are going to be received by the marine corps during the war. So when you consider those staggering numbers, you know, aside from the casualties, its amazing at the ferocity of the fight and just the absolute heroism. And these are the stories that we know about. The stories that we dont know, the things that happened that remain between those marines, the eyewitnesses. Theres probably 27 more medals of honor that we just dont know about. For the marines that did see the flag raised for the sailors that were out at sea, it was symbolic in that the fight has just begin. Its going to continue together as a team as a nation, this island can be seized. So, you know, unceremoniously in some ways became almost a calling charge, if you will. It was something that motivated the marines and continued to resonate in their minds as they push on for another month. Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of the battle of iwo jima. There was 36,000 american casualties. Learn more tonight at 8 00 eastern as we take you to the National Museum of the marine corps in quantico, virginia. We feature American History tv programs each night as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. Watch American History tv and check out museum week at 8 00 p. M. Eastern. Part of American History tv here on cspan3. Cspan. Your unfiltered view of government created by cable in 1979 and brought to you today by your television provider. Now the u. S. Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument in the case of kelly versus United States. Bridget kelly and William Baroni jr. Were convicted in the new jersey bridgegate scandal after two lanes of traffic from jersey city, engine engineenew jersey e Washington Bridge were closed causing major traffic chaos for residents and city officials. It was determined the reason was political against the ft. Lee mayor who refused to endorse thennew Jersey Governor Chris Christie running for reelection. The Supreme Court will decide if federal prosecutors can use a wire fraud statute. This is about an hour. Well hear argument first this morning, case 181059, kelly versus u. S. Mr. Roth . Mr. Chief justice and may it please the court. Once again, the government is trying to use the openended federal fraud statutes to enforce honest government at the state and local levels. Its theory this time is that the defendants committed property fraud by reallocating two traffic lanes from one public road to another without disclosing their real political reason for doing so
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