Early Life, Career, and Family
Lautenberg was born in Paterson, New Jersey, to Sam and Mollie Lautenberg, impoverished Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia, who had arrived in the United States as infants. When Lautenberg was 19, his father, Sam, who worked in silk mills, sold coal, farmed and once ran a tavern, died of cancer. Frank Lautenberg had no formal Jewish education as a child; the family could not afford to join a synagogue and did not live very long in any single place.
Lautenberg served overseas in the United States Army Signal Corps in World War II after graduating from Nutley High School. Then, financed by the GI Bill, he attended and graduated from Columbia Business School in 1949 with a degree in economics. He was the first salesman at successful Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) and was its chairman and CEO. He was the executive commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey from 1978 to 1982.
From his first marriage to Lois Lautenberg, which ended in divorce, Lautenberg has four children: Ellen, Nan, Lisa, and Joshua. In 2001, he married his companion of nearly 16 years, Bonnie S. Englebardt. He has a summer home on Martha's Vineyard.
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