Video: 'Mr Sam, Mr Speaker'

(Thursday, November 16, 1961, 6:20 a.m. CST) — Sam Rayburn, an American politician who holds the record for the longest tenure as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, serving for over 17 years (among his three separate stints), died today in Bonham, Texas, of pancreatic cancer at the age of 79.

Rayburn was also a former House Majority Leader, two-time House Minority Leader and a 24-term congressman, representing Texas’s 4th congressional district as a Democrat from 1913 to 1961.

President John F. Kennedy, former presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Harry Truman, and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, a future president himself, would all attended Rayburn’s funeral on Nov. 18, 1961, in Bonham.

Video: '3 Presidents Attend The Last Rites Of Sam Rayburn (1961)'