Orin Lehman, who turned to public service rather than a career in his family's investment company and eventually became New York State's longest-serving commissioner of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, died Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 88.
The cause was pneumonia, his former wife Wendy Vanderbilt Lehman said.
Mr. Lehman was a great-grandson of Mayer Lehman, a founder of the Lehman Brothers investment house, and a great-nephew of Herbert H. Lehman, who was governor of New York from 1933 to 1942 and a United States senator from 1949 to 1957.
For five years, starting in 1947, Orin Lehman worked as an associate at Lehman Brothers. It did not suit him. "I had some money and I didn't want to devote my life to making money," he told The New York Times in 1993.
In 1950, President Harry S. Truman appointed Mr. Lehman to the advisory board of the Economic Cooperation Administration, the agency that administered American aid to Europe under the Marshall Plan. Mr. Lehman later served as the United States delegate to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
In the 1960s, Mr. Lehman made two unsuccessful bids for public office: for New York City comptroller in 1965 and for Congress a year later. From 1973 to 1975, he was a member of the New York City Board of Corrections. Then, Gov. Hugh L. Carey asked Mr. Lehman to take over stewardship of the state park system. In his 18 years as commissioner, he oversaw 150 parks, 34 historic sites and the annual Empire State Games, a sort of mini-Olympics for New York residents.
Mr. Lehman, a soft-spoken, modest man, had succeeded Robert Moses as commissioner and acknowledged that his had been a tough act to follow. Upon his retirement in 1993, he said of Mr. Moses, "There will never be another like him and there's no point in trying."
Mr. Moses built dozens of new parks from the 1920s through the 1960s; Mr. Lehman constantly battled budget cuts. He did open several new parks, improved many and bolstered his department's historic preservation mission.
Shortly after he retired, the Rockefeller Institute issued a report saying that state parks had deteriorated after years of budget cuts. Mr. Lehman agreed, saying he hoped the report would inspire new financing.
"You can get discouraged," he said. "But you have to be realistic. We have terrible problems with health care, crime, drugs, AIDS. Everyone's doing the best they can."
Born in Manhattan on Jan. 24, 1920, Mr. Lehman was the son of Allan and Evelyn Schiffer Lehman. He graduated from Princeton in 1942, then earned a master's degree in American history at New York University in 1956 and a Ph.D. in the same subject in 1961, also at N.Y.U.
Mr. Lehman's first wife, Jane Bagley Lehman, died in 1988. He is survived by his second wife, Ms. Vanderbilt Lehman (the couple divorced in 1995); three daughters, Susan Lehman Carmichael of Greenwich, Conn., and Brooke Lehman and Sage Lehman, both of Manhattan; four grandchildren; and his companion, the actress Monique Van Vooren.
As an Army pilot in World War II, Mr. Lehman was seriously injured during the Battle of the Bulge. He received the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart. After the war, he worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and Bernard Baruch to start Just One Break, a nonprofit organization that helps disabled people find jobs.
Although he relied on metal canes for the rest of his life, Mr. Lehman made a point of visiting every one of New York's state parks, often walking their trails. When he retired, he called his commissionership "the greatest job in the world; you're always visiting wonderful places."