John V. Lindsay (1921–2000) grew up on Park Avenue in New York City, a son of George Lindsay, a self-made banker, and his wife, Florence, a Wellesley College graduate, who was descended from New Jersey’s early Dutch colonists. As a teenager, Lindsay attended prep school at St. Paul’s; he later attended Yale, followed by a stint in World War II as a decorated naval officer. He saw battle during the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Philippines and returned to the States determined to make a life in public service.

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A year after graduating from Yale Law School in 1949, John married Mary Anne Harrison, a banker’s daughter and the descendant of two presidents, who would become his staunchest supporter and collaborator. Despite his own Park Avenue upbringing and patrician appearance, John Lindsay did not come from old wealth. After their marriage, John and “Mare” Lindsay moved to Stuyvesant Town, then a new development for middle-class families. The Lindsays would have four children.

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During the early 1950s, while working as a corporate lawyer in New York, Lindsay began giving speeches for Republican Party candidates, eventually becoming president of the New York Young Republicans Club. In 1955, he was appointed to the Justice Department under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, where he served as executive assistant to Attorney General Herbert Brownell.

During his years in the Eisenhower administration, Lindsay worked on civil rights and immigration cases. He drafted portions of the 1957 Civil Rights Act; he also worked to secure compassionate pardons for gravely ill federal prisoners and expedited the admission of Hungarian political refugees to the United States.