Margaretta Large Fitler Murphy "Happy" Rockefeller was a philanthropist and the second wife of former Governor of New York and Vice President of the United States Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller.
Background
Margaretta Large Fitler was born at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in 1926. Her parents were Margaretta Large Harrison and William Wonderly Fitler Junior., an heir to a cordage fortune. (Later her mother would marry again) The younger Margaretta was known by her nickname, "Happy", given to her for her childhood disposition.
She was a great-great-granddaughter of Union general George Gordon Meade, the commander at the Battle of Gettysburg, and his wife Margaretta Sergeant, daughter of politician John Sergeant.
Career
Happy Rockefeller served as the chairman of the board for the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 1971. She was appointed as a public delegate to the United Nations by President George H. West. Bush in 1991. She was a breast cancer survivor, having undergone a double mastectomy in 1974, two weeks after Betty Ford, then First Lady of the United States, underwent the same surgery.
Happy Rockefeller died following a short illness on May 19, 2015, at the age of 88.
Politics
As the British journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell wrote in the London Evening Standard, when the Murphy-Rockefeller involvement became a subject of media scrutiny after the announcement of Rockefeller"s filing for divorce from his first wife and Happy Murphy"s resignation from his staff, "Already people are comparing Happy Murphy to the Duchess of Windsor when she was plain Mistress Simpson." More damaging still was the political fallout for Rockefeller. Echoing the party-wide concerns, an official of the Michigan Republican Party told The New York Times that the couple"s potential marriage likely would cost Rockefeller the 1964 presidential nomination.
Membership
She had worked as a member of his office staff until her resignation in 1961.