of the vote. Death Javits died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in West Palm Beach, Florida, at the age of 81 in March 1986. In addition to spouse Marion Ann Borris Javits, he was survived by three children: Joshua, Carla, and Joy. He was predeceased by his brother, who died in 1973. His nephew, Eric M. Javits, was a diplomat who served as the U.S. Representative to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the Conference on Disarmament. He is interred at Linden Hill Jewish Cemetery in Queens, New York. Javits' funeral service was conducted at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan. 1400 people attended the funeral. Among them were former President Richard Nixon, Governor Mario Cuomo and former Governor Hugh Carey, Mayor Ed Koch and former Mayor John Lindsay, Attorney General Edwin Meese, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Cardinal John Joseph O'Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, David Rockefeller, Victor Gotbaum, Douglas Fairbanks Jr and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger. Other mourners included Senators Al D'Amato of New York, Senators Nancy Kassebaum Baker of Kansas, Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, as well as former U.S. Representative Bella Abzug. Legacy Throughout his years in Congress, Javits seldom enjoyed favor with his party's inner circle. Few pieces of legislation bear his name, yet he was especially proud of his work in creating the National Endowment for the Arts, of his sponsorship of the ERISA, which regulated defined-benefit private pensions, and of his leadership in the passage of the 1973 War Powers Act. In 1966, he had a 94% rating from the Americans for Democratic Action. Javits used his office to advance ideas that furthered the policies even of Democratic presidents. In the fall of 1962, he proposed to a group of NATO parliamentarians that multinational corporations jointly create a new kind of investment vehicle to promote private investment throughout Latin America. He intended his idea to complement President John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress. Two years later, some 50 multinational corporations formed the Adela Investment Company, much as Javits had proposed. The senator was generally considered a liberal Republican and was supportive of labor unions and movements for civil rights. In an essay published in 1958 in the magazine Esquire, he predicted the election of the first African-American president by 2000. In 1964, Javits refused to support his party's presidential nominee, his conservative colleague, Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona. Senator