Background

John Davison Rockefeller 3D was the eldest son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. a philanthropist and heir to the Standard Oil fortune and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. As the eldest of five sons (he also had an older sister), he was reared to assume his father's role as the steward of the family's commitment to social service through investment in worthy causes. The Rockefeller Baptist faith was reflected in his devotion to duty and serious purpose; his mother's warmth and good humor were expressed in his capacity for friendship. The Rockefellers maintained homes in New York City; Pocantico Hills in West Tarrytown, New York and Seal Harbor, Maine. The children enjoyed the rich opportunities for recreation available in these environments.

Education

Rockefeller was enrolled in four different private schools from the age of six, but he was a weak student, suffered from bad health, and was painfully shy. At age fifteen he was judged ready for a college preparatory regimen and entered the Loomis School at Windsor, Connecticut A mediocre student at Loomis, Rockefeller struggled with a phobia about his appearance--he was tall, thin, and sharp featured--but by his senior year he was involved in boxing and debating, was on the tennis team, and was elected to the student council. He also made his father proud by saving half of his allowance and donating it to charity. In choosing to attend Princeton instead of Brown, his father's college, Rockefeller made one of many efforts to temper the stifling paternal influence that he faced at home and later in such organizations as the Rockefeller Foundation, where he was surrounded by mature executives of formidable accomplishment who were reluctant to grant initiative to a younger and greatly privileged man without professional expertise. At Princeton, he began to display the intellectual and social skills necessary to succeed as a social leader. He lettered in tennis as a freshman, joined the Cap and Gown Society, taught English to immigrants for three years, and graduated in 1929 with high honors in economics, eighty-fifth in a class of 437. His senior thesis was on industrial relations, a subject of intense interest to his family since the 1914 Ludlow Massacre during a strike at the family-owned Ludlow Fuel and Iron Company in Colorado. While attending college, Rockefeller developed interests that would inform his career as a philanthropist. Some influential professors were eugenicists, and he took an independent reading course on Malthus. In 1928 his father had him appointed to the board of directors of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, the means through which the elder Rockefeller invested money in social science research and action programs in criminology, sex education, and birth control. Rockefeller became especially interested in birth control and population issues. When the Bureau was terminated in 1934, he wrote to his father that he intended to maintain a strong interest in birth control. The elder Rockefeller also drew his son into his work with the League of Nations. The younger Rockefeller spent the summer of 1928 as an intern in the Information Section of the League's office in Geneva, Switzerland, thus beginning a lifelong engagement with international relations. He urged his father to allow him to make a world tour after graduation, overcame objections that it would appear to be a rich boy's frivolous grand tour, and traveled through Russia, China, and Japan, concluding his trip with work for an Institute for Pacific Relations conference in Japan. He returned home to begin apprenticeship in his father's New York office in December 1929, shortly after the start of the Great Depression, with an abiding interest in Japanese culture and in improving American relations with Asian people.

Career

Despite the support of a strong family, independent wealth provided by trusts that his father established for all of his children, and many significant and demanding appointments to the managing boards of such organizations as the Rockefeller Foundation, Colonial Williamsburg (Va. ), and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, Rockefeller was unable to find a sense of individual accomplishment in his work. He suffered from agoraphobia, the fear of public places, and the resulting involuntary reclusion and his characteristic modesty reinforced the impression that his younger brother Nelson was the man to watch among their generation. While Rockefeller's father, an only son, had been the principal heir to a growing fortune that offered many exciting opportunities for pioneering work in philanthropy, Rockefeller joined his father's work in a period of radical economic retrenchment. His father's aggressive giving, new tax laws, and the decision to divide resources relatively equally among five sons meant that Rockefeller would have much less financial leverage as a philanthropist than his father enjoyed. Rockefeller made two major efforts to reorient both the Rockefeller Foundation and Colonial Williamsburg to reflect his vision of a new international order. He felt that future events increasingly would be shaped in the non-Western world, was especially concerned by the economic and demographic problems of Asia, and wanted to correct the American lack of appreciation for non-Western cultures. Rockefeller hoped to move the focus of the Rockefeller Foundation from university research in the West to the application of knowledge for social transformation in the less developed world. He also hoped that the emphasis of Colonial Williamsburg would gradually be shifted from historical preservation to educational programs that would explain the virtues of democracy and a free economy. He was disappointed in both of these efforts. Rockefeller served in the United States Navy during World War II with the rank of lieutenant commander. Work on an interagency task force devoted to planning postwar policy for Japan proved good preparation for a 1952 invitation from John Foster Dulles to join the Japanese peace treaty negotiations, with special responsibility for improving cultural relations. Also in 1952 Rockefeller revived the Japan Society, which promoted a series of cultural exchanges that helped to normalize relations between the United States and Japan. The following year he created the Population Council to promote research on population control. In the same year, Rockefeller, seeking to improve food supplies in the Far East, organized the Council on Economic and Cultural Affairs to provide assistance for Asian farmers (it was renamed the Agricultural Development Council in 1963). In 1956 he organized the Asia Society in an effort to heal the Cold War atmosphere of suspicion that followed the Communist takeover of China. Rockefeller became the American leader with whom prominent Asians most often sought counsel, and a persistent voice for cooperation and moderation in foreign affairs. In 1955, Rockefeller assumed the chairmanship of a committee of civic leaders who were working to create Lincoln Center, a new home for the performing arts on New York City's Upper West Side. This project was a source of frequent anguish for fourteen years as the scale and scope of the plan grew. Rockefeller was the key figure in raising the more than $184 million needed to complete the project and in forging consensus among the diverse group of impresarios, government officials, and social leaders whose cooperation was essential to the center's success. When he resigned from the Lincoln Center board of directors in 1969, a section of New York City had been revived and an international center of excellence in the performing arts had been firmly established. Rockefeller's lobbying was responsible for President Lyndon Johnson's statement in his 1965 state of the union address that he would seek new ways to deal with the explosion in world population and the growing scarcity of world resources. Working through the Population Council, Rockefeller was an important influence during the 1960's in organizing scientific and public opinion that questioned the wisdom of population growth. In 1970, President Richard Nixon appointed Rockefeller chairman of the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. The commission's 1972 report made a strong case for an aggressive national policy to promote family planning, but Nixon disappointed Rockefeller by disassociating himself from the report's recommendations on sex education and abortion and by ignoring the rest of the work. Rockefeller also made a major effort to influence public policy on corporate philanthropy. Much concerned by the hostility directed toward the Rockefeller Foundation during the 1950's by populist and anti-Communist congressional zealots, Rockefeller argued that private foundations played a vital role in promoting constructive social change. He was the key figure in the creation of the Commission on Private Philanthropy and Public Needs in 1972 and lobbied Congress for regulatory and tax laws under which private giving could flourish. Rockefeller also saw great potential in the civil rights and youth movements. He described his vision of the United States as a pluralistic democracy that emphasized cooperation between public and private institutions in The Second American Revolution (1973).

When Rockefeller was killed in an automobile accident involving a teenage driver in the town of Mount Pleasant, New York (near the family estate at Pocantico Hills), he was still involved in promoting his interests in population, international relations, and the arts. Following a memorial service at Riverside Church in New York City and national editorial recognition of his immense contributions to the arts, Asian-American relations, and research in population and agriculture, he was buried in the Rockefeller Cemetery near the Pocantico estate, close to the graves of his parents. His major collections of Oriental and American art were donated to the Asia Society in New York and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, respectively.

Personality

He lived up to the family credo that much is expected from those to whom much is given. The Protestant ethic and the missionary impulse were still present in his makeup, but they were overlaid with a secular and cosmopolitan humanism.

Connections

Rockefeller married Blanchette Ferry Hooker on November 11, 1932. A Vassar woman and president of her class, Blanchette traced her lineage to the Puritan founders of Connecticut. Her father was a leading manufacturer and a Republican party activist. Possessed of a zest for life and socially at ease, she proved an ideal mate for a sometimes inhibited spouse. Of their four children, their only son, John Davison Rockefeller, IV, known as Jay, carried on the family tradition of public service as governor of West Virginia (1976 - 1985) and United States Senator from West Virginia (beginning in 1985).

Father:

John Davison

John Davison Rockefeller, Jr. was a philanthropist and heir to the Standard Oil fortune

married:

Blanchette

Rockefeller married Blanchette Ferry Hooker on November 11, 1932. A Vassar woman and president of her class, Blanchette traced her lineage to the Puritan founders of Connecticut. Her father was a leading manufacturer and a Republican party activist. Possessed of a zest for life and socially at ease, she proved an ideal mate for a sometimes inhibited spouse.