Rockefeller Largesse Still Shapes American Life

Oct. 19, 2002 -- No American family has left so many imprints on the country, and our lives, as the Rockefellers have. No matter where you live in America, practically anywhere you look, this family has left its mark.

David Rockefeller, now 87, is the youngest of the generation known as "the Rockefeller brothers." Though he has worked hard all of his life, he has lived in what appears to most people to have been another world.

The Rockefeller family's home base, high above the Hudson River, half an hour north of Manhattan, is the size of a small town. The main house was built at the turn of the century by the family patriarch, John D. Rockefeller, and is surrounded by gardens, fountains, riding trails, and art.

Growing up on the 3,400-acre estate was great, David says. As a child he had tennis courts, horses, a golf course, a swimming pool and even bowling alleys to occupy his time.

To help raise him and his four brothers and sister, David's parents had a staff of nurses, tutors, secretaries, waitresses, kitchen maids, parlor maids, chamber maids, chauffeurs, and chefs.

David recalls taking food baskets to the poor when he was a child. He said his driver would carry the baskets up the stairs of the tenement houses because they were too heavy for him. He also remembers his unusual trips to school as a child. "Father thought I should get exercise," David said, and so he would roller skate part of the way, with a family limousine following behind him.

Ambition Without Remorse

The Rockefeller legend — and fortune — began with John D. Rockefeller.

His father was a snake-oil salesmen and a bigamist, but John Davison Rockefeller parlayed a few years of high school and megawatts of raw ambition into the largest personal fortune this country had ever seen.

He did it in the oil business — buying out his competitors, or crushing them, to create the mammoth Standard Oil Company. "A lot of things that he did were legal then, perhaps would not be now," David said, adding, "monopoly is a good example." David says his grandfather never expressed the slightest remorse about his business dealings.

The money rolled in, despite government trustbusters, hearings, investigations and lawsuits — so much money that John D. Rockefeller hired people to show him how to put it to use.

The result was philanthropy on an unprecedented scale. He founded the University of Chicago, financed the education of black women at Atlanta's Spellman College, started a medical research group that grew into Rockefeller University, and established his own billion-dollar foundation.

Racing With One’s Conscience

"I believe the power to make money is a gift from God," John D. Rockefeller said, and he passed that philosophy, and his sense of duty, on to his only son, John D. Rockefeller Jr., who would take the helm of both the family businesses and the philanthropy. He sometimes found balancing the two difficult — so much so that he suffered two nervous breakdowns. He once described his business dealings as a race with his own conscience. David said his father's religious upbringing often made him question whether he was doing the right thing.

John D. Rockefeller Jr. created Rockefeller Center in New York City, and saved giant redwoods in the West. He also gave away plenty in between. In fact, he spent most of his life giving things away. "In the process," David said, his father "got great satisfaction…. He saw problems and he helped solve them."

John Jr.'s interest in historical preservation and the environment brought about colonial Williamsburg, and helped preserve the palace of Versailles. His wife, Abby, a power in her own right, started the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

She and her husband had six children, and this third generation of Rockefellers would leave their own marks.

Abby, the oldest and only girl, would choose a more private life, but her five brothers lived as if they were challenged by the family sense of obligation. Two would become governors: Winthrop in Arkansas, and Nelson in New York. Nelson would serve four terms as governor, and then become vice president. John D. the Third would champion scientific research; brother Laurence would become a leading environmentalist.

Wealth’s Responsibilities

The youngest brother, David, would rise to head the Chase Manhattan Bank, overseeing its international growth while maintaining his interests in philanthropy and art. Today he helps control a family legacy — and a family fortune — that continues to shape American life.

What many may not know about David is that he has an unusual handicap for a banker — dyslexia. "I never learned to read quickly and I'm sure that's the reason. It's a handicap. But, you know, we all have handicaps and we learn to live with them," he said.

David Rockefeller has worked his whole life — not out of need, obviously, but because, he says, he enjoys it.

Now, David has done something no Rockefeller before him has. He has written a book, Memoirs, about his life in one of America's most powerful families. Always, Rockefeller stresses the responsibilities that he feels accompany great wealth. "The people who have money have an obligation to society to do things that are helpful to others," he said.

When people write him or ask him for money, David says he does what his father did. He tells them that he feels his money can benefit more people when it's distributed through organizations.

David, a widower, has six children. He and his brother Laurence, now 92, are the only surviving members of their generation. Their childrens' children, and their cousins form a fifth generation: more than 50 of them.

There is enough family money to provide a cushion for all of them, but some have rebelled against family tradition, feeling the Rockefeller name sets them apart.

David said he feels a little sad about their decision to distance themselves from the family. "I think that they've missed a lot out of life … but one can't live the lives of other people," he said.

Rockefeller said he hopes his family will be remembered "as a family that recognized that having wealth gives one opportunities which other people don't have. And that it's very important to take advantage of those opportunities."