On Tuesday, October 16, Har Zion Temple on Hagys Ford Road in Narberth held a funeral for the recently deceased former Pennsylvania senator Arlen Specter.
The man reported by CNN to have “embodied a vanishing breed of liberal Republicanism before switching to the Democratic Party at the twilight of his political career” passed away due to complications from non-Hodgkins lymphoma on Sunday night.
Elected to the Senate in 1980 and serving until 2011, Specter was Pennsylvania’s longest office-holding senator. He made a name for himself as a Republican of the Jewish faith – an identity which, akin to the discord between his party affiliation and the staunchly Democratic leanings of his hometown of Philadelphia, seemed to be the antithesis of the religion’s stereotypical image.
Specter was involved with his Judaism, however, and his funeral was held at Har Zion, a conservative temple. Attendees of the service included Democratic Senator Bob Casey, Republican Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, US District Judge Jan DuBois, chief judge on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Anthony J. Scirica, and Vice President Joe Biden, among other famous political faces. President Barack Obama, though not in attendance, told the media that Specter “was always a fighter.” The current Vice President, who knew Specter from years in Congress together, spoke in honor of the mourned. “I’ve never seen as much undaunted courage as Arlen had – both physically and politically. He believed he could change the world, if he just worked hard enough at it.”
Specter’s most famous show of personal integrity came in 2010, when he voted for the President’s stimulus package instead of sticking to the Republican party agenda, crossing party lines to make his point and ultimately losing his seat in that November’s election. His son Shanin Specter, a lawyer for the Philadelphia area, cast his father as a principled man in summation of the ninety-minute-long tribute by friends and family at the funeral: “In a dark time for our nation, he was willing to lose his seat to cast a decisive vote.”