Speaker Joseph Byrns' coffin was borne into the Capitol for funeral services attended by Members of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his cabinet, the diplomatic corps, and the Supreme Court. Byrns’ sudden death on June 4, 1936, marked the first time a sitting Speaker’s funeral was held in the House Chamber. In eulogizing Byrns, friend and succeeding Speaker William Bankhead remarked on “the equity of his decisions as a presiding officer, of the unfailing patience and generosity with which he treated every approach of his colleagues in the discharge of his public duties, of the dignity with which he presided over a great parliamentary body.”
