Oliver’s body will lie in state next week

A flag-draped casket holding Sheila Y. Oliver will lie in state in the rotunda of the New Jersey Statehouse in Trenton next week so that members of the public may pay their respects to the state’s second lieutenant governor, who died on Tuesday at age 71 after an extended illness.

This marks the first time the honor of lying in state will be accorded to a public official, at least under the current New Jersey State Constitution, the New Jersey Globe has confirmed.

Gov. Phil Murphy’s office and the Oliver family are continuing to work out the details of the funeral services,  which could be announced as early as today.

Murphy will sign an executive order today detailing a period of mourning for Oliver, his two-time running mate and the first woman of color to serve as Assembly Speaker and win a statewide election.  Flags are expected to be flown at half-staff for thirty days in her honor.

Among the tributes to Oliver that are being discussed is a proposal to commission an official portrait to be displayed in the statehouse, along with one of Kim Guadagno, who became the state’s first lieutenant governor in 2010 and served in that post for eight years.

Oliver is the first elected state official from the executive branch to die in office since New Jersey’s first governor, William Livingston, died in 1790 after nearly fourteen years in office.

The last statewide officeholder to die in office was U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg in 2013.  His body lay in repose in the Senate chamber, followed by a funeral service at Arlington National Cemetery.

Lautenberg was the eighth U.S. Senator from New Jersey to die in office, and the first since William Warren Barbour died in 1943.