Perhaps no New York City mayor had a more trying first day in office then did John Lindsay. A veteran of World War II, in which he served as a naval officer and
 achieved the rank of lieutenant, Lindsay graduated Yale Law School in 1948. After a decade in private practice in a New York law firm, Lindsay went to work for the
 Justice Department in 1955, serving as a liaison to the White House and arguing cases before the Supreme Court. Lindsay, a liberal Republican, returned to New York
 City and won election to Congress in Manhattan's heavily Democratic 17th District. He was elected to four terms in the House of Representatives, from 1958 to 1964,
 before running successfully for mayor in 1965. On his first day in office, Lindsay was greeted with a crippling transit strike that brought the entire city to a near
 standstill — it proved to be just the first of many bitter strikes he would contend with during his tenure as mayor. The transit strike denied Lindsay of sleep for 26 of his
 first 28 hours as mayor and forced the cancellation of a five borough inaugural tour. Before a crowd of 2,500, Lindsay addressed New York City's mounting social
 problems, and the consequences of not solving them: "If we fail, the implications of our defeat will be assessed throughout the nation, to be proclaimed by the cynics as
 proof that great cities are no longer governable."

 Upon taking office, Lindsay vowed to open up the "lines of communication between the people and their government." While civil unrest erupted in other major cities
 during the turbulent late sixties, Lindsay helped maintain calm in New York City by taking walking tours of the city's urban ghettos. He established the Urban Action
 Taskforce and Neighborhood City Halls to field complaints about municipal services — innovations also credited with easing tensions in poor areas. Lindsay
 consolidated overlapping city agencies into super-agencies, eliminating waste and redundancy, and greatly increased government spending. He decentralized the school
 system and created community school districts. He won reelection in 1969 on the Liberal Party line after losing the Republican primary. In 1971, he switched affiliation
 to the Democratic Party. In 1972, he entered the presidential primaries in Florida and Wisconsin, losing both. After serving out his second term, Lindsay returned to
 private life in 1973, working at his law practice, authoring books, and serving as a television commentator.