Obituary of Wesley L. Lance

Former State Senate President Wesley L. Lance died on August 25, 2007, at the Rolling Hills Care Center, Clinton Township. He was 98. Wesley L. Lance was born on November 21, 1908, in Glen Gardner, Hunterdon County, New Jersey, to Leonard Arville Lance and Florence Smith Lance. His father was a partner in Lance Brothers General Store in Glen Gardner and his mother was a teacher. His family has long been involved in the agricultural, business and civic life of Hunterdon County since settling there in 1710. Mr. Lance was graduated from Glen Gardner Elementary School in 1919 and from Hampton High School in 1923, at the age of 14. He spent a post-graduate year in high school and was graduated from Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1928, where he was a member of the baseball team. He taught high school civics and coached various sports in North Plainfield and Hackettstown before entering Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which he was graduated in 1935. Mr. Lance was elected as a Republican to the New Jersey General Assembly from Hunterdon County in 1937, and reelected in 1938, 1939 and 1940, receiving the nominations of both political parties in 1939. It is believed that at the time of his death he was the person who had served in the state legislature in the most distant past. He was elected to an unexpired term in the State Senate in 1941 and reelected in 1942, but resigned his draft-exempt position in 1943 to enter the United States Navy, where he served in the Pacific Theatre of War on the aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Boxer. He was appointed Judge of the Hunterdon County Court for a five-year term by Governor Alfred E. Driscoll in 1947 and elected that spring as a delegate to the New Jersey Constitutional Convention. He was the last surviving of the 81 members of that convention, which completely rewrote the State Constitution. Mr. Lance was again elected to the State Senate from Hunterdon County in 1953, with the nominations of both political parties, and reelected in 1957. He was chairman n of the Joint Legislative Budget and Appropriations Committee in 1957, Senate Majority Leader in 1958 and Senate President in 1959, a year in which he served on various occasions as Acting Governor while Governor Robert B. Meyner was traveling on trade missions to South America and the Soviet Union. Mr. Lance concentrated in the State Senate on fiscal and constitutional issues and matters dealing with commuter rail transportation and water supply. He was a principal sponsor, along with the late Senator Donal E. Fox of Essex County, of the Fox-Lance Act, landmark tax abatement legislation that has fostered urban redevelopment in New Jersey for almost 50 years. Mr. Lance was Hunterdon County Republican State Committeeman from 1961 to 1989. He was a delegate to the 1966 New Jersey Constitutional Convention, which dealt exclusively with reapportionment of the Legislature. Mr. Lance was President of the New Jersey Electoral College in 1968. He was a member of the New Jersey Bar and practiced law in Clinton for 70 years, concentrating in school board and estate matters. During the 1950s he was counsel to the New Jersey State Farm Bureau. He was attorney for Lebanon Township for more than 60 years and was Hunterdon County Counsel for several years in the early 1940s. Mr. Lance was a member of various bank boards in Hunterdon County and in its early years a trustee of the Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington. He was a Mason. He organized the Tri-County Baseball League for men in Hunterdon and Warren Counties, New Jersey and Northampton County, Pennsylvania and was its president for 40 years. Mr. Lance was married in 1951 to Anne Anderson, then the Director of the Hunterdon County Welfare Board. She died in 1965. He was married from 1970 until her death in 2002 to Jeannette Bonnell Gill, widow of John F. Gill, chief pilot of Eastern Airlines. Mr. Lance is survived by twin sons, James Lance of Flemington, with whom he practiced law, and State Senator Minority Leader Leonard Lance and his wife, Heidi A. Rohrbach, of Clinton Township, a stepson, former Navy Lieutenant James H. Gill and his wife Christina Gill, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and a stepdaughter, Roberta Gill Oliver and her husband, Samuel Oliver, of Union Township. He is also survived by four grandchildren, Peter Rohrbach Frank, Jonathan James Gill, Scott Walker Oliver and Leah Shannon Oliver. Visitation will be at the Martin Funeral Home, Clinton, on Wednesday, August 29, 2007, from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. The funeral service will be on Thursday, August 30, 2007, at 10 a.m at the Spruce Run Lutheran Church,442 West Hill Rd., Glen Gardner, NJ - #908-537-4824 or www.vian.com/srlc/ -- Family and friends are invited to meet directly at the Church. The interment will take place in the church cemetery. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations may be made to the Hunterdon Medical Center Foundation, 2100 Wescott Drive, Flemington, New Jersey 08822.