EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
From his first breath, John D. Rockefeller III had grown up in the long shadow of dynastic expectation. When he was born, one New York paper joked that Wall Street brokers were debating whether the event would “buoy the market or merely hold it steady.” Tall and lean, with a long, craggy face, John had a tightly wound personality, which he inherited from his father. Shy and introspective, he was severely self-critical. Like his father, he aspired to be a paragon of virtue and, also like his father, paid a terrible emotional price for it. For all their similarities—or perhaps because of them—Junior and his eldest son had a relationship fraught with tension. John III felt overshadowed by his father and dejected by a sense that he could never measure up to his lofty standards. Babs claimed that John III was the most keenly injured by Junior’s “primly correcting supervisory stance.” John chafed at his father’s limitations, noting once in his diary, “F[ather] always has own way. He is … broad in business relations, but so narrow in some of his family details.” Unlike Babs, John showed no flashes of rebellion and swallowed his anger.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Rockefeller Mauzé · John D. Rockefeller III · New York · Wall Street · John
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John went through several private schools, including the Roger Ascham School, the Browning School, and the Loomis Institute, but, unlike his younger brothers, he was not allowed to attend the progressive Lincoln School, which had been started in 1917 with a grant from the General Education Board. Embarrassed by his large jaw and convinced that the right side of his face was deformed, he began to manifest in adolescence the same litany of psychosomatic ailments (headaches, stomach pains, and so forth) that afflicted his father. In early 1922, he developed such torturous earaches that he had to spend the winter with his grandfather in Florida, where he enjoyed the old man’s waggishness on the golf course. Senior added a bright touch of eccentricity to his dour world. He filled up his diary with dreary self-deprecation: “I have no personal attraction. Nobody wants to sit next to me at the table or anything.” “I have no real friends here at school.” “Wish I was more popular.” “I wish I was different in many ways than I am.” “Am much too self-conscious at all times.” He had inherited Eliza’s puritan conscience without Big Bill’s saving levity.
Names: William Avery Rockefeller · Eliza Davison Rockefeller · General Education Board · Florida · Browning School · Lincoln School · Roger Ascham School · Loomis Institute · John
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As an adolescent, John saved or donated half his income to charity and had little inkling of the magnitude of the Rockefeller fortune. According to legend, he was steering a decrepit rowboat at Seal Harbor one day when a neighbor’s son said, “Why don’t you get a motor boat?” Taken aback, John replied, “A motor boat! Gee whiz! Who do you think we are—Vanderbilts!” At Princeton, he was not among the few hundred students who owned a car. One tale, perhaps apocryphal, claims that John was derided when he tried to cash a check at an Italian restaurant on Nassau Street in Princeton; he had accepted checks signed by George Washington and Julius Caesar, the owner explained, but he was not such a dunce as to take one signed by John D. Rockefeller. Although the 1920 appearance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first novel, This Side of Paradise, had certified Princeton’s reputation for fast living, John III did not drink, smoke, curse, or study on Sunday. During receptions at his eating club, he would only brush the silver loving cup against his lips when it was passed around in order to avoid contaminating contact with liquor. While his classmates drank themselves into oblivion, John taught English to immigrants at a local settlement house or volunteered at the YMCA. Even at Princeton, he was already serving on the board of the Dunbar National Bank, a black-managed bank in Harlem supported by his father and other businessmen. Probably more popular at Princeton than he realized, John nonetheless portrayed his undergraduate years as a lonely purgatory. Crippled by his conscience, he dwelled morbidly on his own imperfections in his diary. “Am afraid I have an inferiority complex—really know I have. Never feel as if people—both boys and girls—wanted to be with me.” “Can’t keep smile on my face which is most embarrassing. Muscles tremble. Give anything to be over it.” In his final bleak college entry, John recorded, “Guess the reason I am glad to get through college is because I have made rather a mess of it; also haven’t really made hardly any friends.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller III · Princeton University · F. Scott Fitzgerald · Seal Harbor · Harlem · Vanderbilts · YMCA · Nassau Street · George Washington · Julius Caesar · Dunbar National Bank · John
EPUB paragraph 17 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
After graduating, John traveled around the world before taking up his duties at 26 Broadway, where he placed himself at his father’s disposal. The family office was now an enormous bureaucracy staffed by more than one hundred people, including lawyers, accountants, money managers, and real-estate experts. If Rockefeller had let Junior wander confusedly during his early years at 26 Broadway, Junior handled his son in a much more direct and stifling manner. During John’s first day at work on December 2, 1929, Junior held a press conference to introduce his son then proceeded to dominate the discussion. Each time the reporters posed a question for the lanky, fidgety young man, Junior answered for him. Though Junior had soon placed his son on fifteen boards, including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rockefeller Institute, and given him a small, adjoining office, John seldom saw his father. Obsessive and driven, John III worked around the clock, six days a week, delving into everything from juvenile delinquency to population control. Like his father in his early years, John III was often the token Rockefeller on charity boards, and all the responsibilities took their toll.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · John D. Rockefeller III · Rockefeller Foundation · Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research · 26 Broadway · John
EPUB paragraph 18 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
This high-strung young man needed a woman who could save him from his nervous system, as Abby had with Junior, and he found an ideal partner in Blanchette Ferry Hooker. The Vassar-educated Blanchette was a beautiful heiress, sweet and charming, who behaved with a dignified but unaffected manner. Her father had founded the Hooker Electrochemical Company while her mother had inherited money from the Ferry retail seed business. John III was such a bashful wooer that to speed things up, Junior gave him the key to a private cottage at Seal Harbor and encouraged him to take Blanchette there. The couple were finally married on November 11, 1932, before 2,500 guests at the Riverside Church.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · John D. Rockefeller III · Riverside Church · Vassar College · Blanchette Ferry Hooker · Seal Harbor · Blanchette · Hooker Electrochemical Company · Ferry
EPUB paragraph 19 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
During their courtship at Seal Harbor, Blanchette learned just how guilt-ridden John was when he handed her a comprehensive list of his faults then asked her to reciprocate. She saw that her future husband was bowed beneath the weight of the family name and fortune, and she helped him to strike out on his own. It was not easy. Like his aunt Edith, John III had suffered from intermittent bouts of agoraphobia in school, a condition that worsened after his marriage. When he and Blanchette went into society, he occasionally submitted to dizzy spells that nearly sent him into a dead swoon. Though the condition eventually subsided, as long as it lasted John and Blanchette seldom ventured out to public functions.
Names: Edith Rockefeller McCormick · John D. Rockefeller III · Seal Harbor · Blanchette · John
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The least-known of the brothers, John was the most conscientious philanthropist. Besides the Rockefeller Foundation, he chaired Lincoln Center and the Population Council and become the most significant force behind the Asia Society. Avoiding limousines and luxury hotels whenever possible and often traveling under the fictitious name John Davison, he refrained from any self-aggrandizement. Oddly, like his father, John could not abide his wife’s fondness for modern art and, taking a leaf from Abby, Blanchette firmly defied him and became president of the Museum of Modern Art. Also like his father, John reacted to the controversial Rockefeller legacy by acquiring a conscience that was a punishing taskmaster. His daughter said, “He was someone who suffered from never doing things just for enjoyment.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · John Davison · Rockefeller Foundation · Museum of Modern Art · Blanchette · Lincoln Center · Population Council · Asia Society · John
EPUB paragraph 21 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
If John III seemed imprisoned by the abundant family rules, Nelson seemed heedless of the inhibitions that ruled their father’s life. Nelson’s brash exuberance only sapped John’s confidence further. As the latter recorded in his diary, “Nelson dances very well. I am rotten.” “Nelson always makes a big hit.” While his brothers were rangy, the young Nelson had Junior’s short, square frame. Named after Senator Aldrich, he inherited the Aldrich charm and extroversion, and alone of the six children he exhibited a flamboyant craving for publicity, a cheerful egotism in a family that frowned on self-assertion. A naturally commanding figure, Nelson behaved less like a student at the Lincoln School, where he zipped about in a flashy Ford roadster, than a principal. He accosted one startled new teacher with an invitation to call on him if she needed any information because “you’re new here and I’ve been around for quite a while.” Not since Big Bill had there been such a fun-loving, narcissistic Rockefeller. Junior often winced at Nelson’s cocky antics, while Abby strongly identified with his “frank and outspoken” nature and clearly favored him over the other children.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · William Avery Rockefeller · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · John D. Rockefeller III · Nelson Rockefeller · Nelson W. Aldrich · Ford · Lincoln School · John
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A popular student at Dartmouth, Nelson made the soccer team and was elected vice president of his junior class. Even then, he was ingratiating himself with people, sharpening his political skills. With his worn corduroy pants and sagging sweaters, he tried to blend into the crowd, but he was a star in sackcloth and converted the Dartmouth president, Ernest Hopkins, into a pal. He did not drink, taught a Sunday-school class, got high enough grades to make Phi Beta Kappa, and humbly rode a bike instead of a car.
Names: Nelson Rockefeller · Ernest Hopkins · Dartmouth · Phi Beta Kappa
EPUB paragraph 23 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
After his parents scotched his dream of becoming an architect, Nelson majored in economics. For his honors thesis, he wanted to write an essay that would vindicate his grandfather and Standard Oil and was eager to hear the story from the patriarch’s own lips. A wonderful raconteur about so many events, Rockefeller carefully avoided serious discussion of his business history. “I was thinking the other day that Grandfather has never mentioned the Company to us,” Nelson wrote to his father, “nor has he ever told us anything about his stupendous work in organizing the Company and leading it for so many years.” To remedy this omission, Nelson asked if his father could set up a talk, saying it “would be an outstanding and unforgettable experience in our lives.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Nelson Rockefeller · Standard Oil
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While Rockefeller mulled this over, Junior mailed his son the hagiographic Inglis manuscript, which Nelson found engrossing. “It was thrilling!” he told Junior. “For the first time I felt that I really knew Grandfather a little—got a glimpse into the power and grandeur of his life.” Nelson did not realize that he was only reading a pretty family fiction; the Rockefeller children were being duped, inadvertently, by family public relations. As for Rockefeller, though flattered by the request, he declined to speak to his grandson, leaving Nelson—like Junior and the other Rockefellers—no better informed about Standard Oil than any well-read stranger. Senior’s behavior guaranteed that anxiety over the fortune’s legitimacy would spread to his descendants, strengthening their guilty consciences. In his thesis, Nelson, coached by Inglis, flatly denied that Standard Oil ever drove competitors from business unfairly. “These companies were treated with extreme fairness and in many cases with generosity,” he wrote, dismissing as mythical that Standard Oil had amassed power “through local price discrimination, bogus independents and espionage.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Nelson Rockefeller · William O. Inglis · Standard Oil · Rockefeller family
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In 1929, Nelson turned twenty-one on the same day that Rockefeller reached ninety. “The 90 makes my 21 seem mighty small and insignificant,” he wrote his parents, “just like a little sapling standing by a mighty fir. But the sapling still has time to grow and develop and someday it might itself turn into a tree of some merit. Who knows?” Nelson leaped at any chance to golf with Rockefeller in Florida and was an attentive audience for his yarns and witticisms. After one 1932 visit, Nelson told Junior that Rockefeller “certainly is an extraordinary man, about the finest I know. There are few people that I really admire as being all-round success, but he leads the list. His point of view and outlook on life are so perfectly grand. And what a sense of humor!”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Nelson Rockefeller · Florida
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In the autumn of 1929, in his can-do, take-charge style, Nelson declared that he would marry a childhood friend, Mary Todhunter Clark, known as Tod. Thin and aristocratic in manner, she was a granddaughter of George Roberts, a former president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Junior was irate that Nelson had not consulted him and consented only after Abby lobbied him. Nelson and Tod went to Ormond Beach to see Rockefeller, who gave his blessing after golfing with this young lady from the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia. Tod struck observers as witty and intelligent, an excellent mimic and fine sportswoman, if rather cool and self-contained. On June 23, 1930, Nelson married her in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, while police restrained a thousand spectators outside. At the last minute, Rockefeller could not come and sent $20,000 in securities instead. More and more, he refrained from trips that might threaten his health.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Nelson Rockefeller · Pennsylvania Railroad · Ormond Beach · Philadelphia · Mary Todhunter Clark · George Roberts · Pennsylvania · Tod · Main Line · Bala Cynwyd
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For their honeymoon, Nelson and Tod spent two weeks in Seal Harbor, where they were attended by twenty-four servants. As a wedding gift, Junior treated them to a nine-month around-the-world trip that took on the trappings of a state visit. At each port of call, they were escorted by Standard Oil officials who introduced them to prime ministers and other dignitaries. For Nelson, the meeting with Mahatma Gandhi in India had one severe shortcoming: “He showed no interest in me whatever,” he complained.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Nelson Rockefeller · Standard Oil · Seal Harbor · Tod · India · Mahatma Gandhi
EPUB paragraph 28 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
During the summer of 1931, Nelson started work at 26 Broadway, where he felt crowded out by Junior’s phalanx of advisers. In an abortive venture, he launched a company for marketing merchandise and discussed the project at length with Rockefeller in Florida. “Every morning we’d take turns reading Psalms before breakfast, which consisted of floods of orange juice,” said Nelson. He made his mark by hustling tenants for Rockefeller Center and ended up as the project’s chief panjandrum. During his eventful career, he served as an assistant secretary of state for Latin America under Roosevelt and undersecretary of health, education, and welfare under Eisenhower. When sworn in as governor of New York in 1959, he took the oath of office on the Bible of his great-grandmother Eliza. After thirty years and five children, the marriage to Tod ended in divorce in 1962. When he married Margaretta “Happy” Murphy the following year, many people thought his marital history had irreparably harmed his presidential ambitions, and he had to settle for the vice presidency under Gerald Ford.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Eliza Davison Rockefeller · Nelson Rockefeller · Theodore Roosevelt · Starr J. Murphy · New York · Rockefeller Center · 26 Broadway · Dwight D. Eisenhower · Gerald Ford · Florida · Tod · Latin America
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When Laurance was born in 1910, the family chose this strange spelling of his name to honor the ailing Cettie. “This we do so as to make it as much like Laura as possible,” Junior told his mother. Everybody said the thin, sharp-featured Laurance looked more like Senior than any of the other children did. Bright and laconic, with an incisive wit, he also had his grandfather’s enigmatic detachment. However, he lacked the “power to concentrate on difficult and routine tasks,” as Junior said when Laurance was at the Lincoln School. The boy took up photography, built a wooden auto powered by a motorcycle engine, and showed a flair for gadgetry. As a philosophy major at Princeton, Laurance shed many of his boyhood religious beliefs in the face of rational scrutiny. While studying at Harvard Law School, he developed pneumonia during his first semester and had to spend the winter with Senior at Ormond Beach. Because he had qualms about the social philosophy of the law and had to struggle to get through his finals, he decided to drop out without taking his degree.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Laura Spelman Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Princeton University · Ormond Beach · Laura · Lincoln School · Harvard Law School
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In 1934, Laurance married Mary French in Woodstock, Vermont. A charming Vassar graduate of quiet strength, Mary was the granddaughter of Frederick Billings, a president of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Mary’s brother had roomed with Nelson at Dartmouth. Laurance had his grandfather’s sound instinct for business opportunities and the same unwavering confidence in his own judgment. When he inherited Rockefeller’s New York Stock Exchange seat, he became the youngest member of the exchange. At twenty-eight, with his friend Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Laurance joined a syndicate to buy Eastern Airlines, eventually becoming its largest shareholder. He also took a sizable stake in the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, which surged ahead on the strength of aviation contracts during World War II. He was later involved in the Viking rocket and other aerospace projects, and enjoyed flying his own plane. After the family made its first trip to the Grand Tetons in the early 1920s, he became entranced by conservation no less than his father had been. “I was the youngest one there, and therefore the most impressionable,” he said. He later created vacation resorts in places of unspoiled scenery, managing them through a company called Rockresorts that eventually owned some of the world’s most gorgeous vacation spots.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Nelson Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Vassar College · Grand Teton National Park · Frederick Billings · Mary French · Eddie Rickenbacker · World · Mary · Dartmouth · Vermont · New York Stock Exchange · Northern Pacific Railroad · Woodstock · Eastern Airlines · McDonnell Aircraft Corporation · Viking · Rockresorts
EPUB paragraph 31 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
Winthrop’s life nearly started out with an embarrassing blunder. Junior and Abby were about to christen him Winthrop Aldrich Rockefeller (after Abby’s brother) when they realized what his initials would spell and scrapped the middle name. He was a chubby, maladroit boy who bore the brunt of Nelson and Laurance’s sadistic urges. When he developed kidney trouble, his two older brothers considerately reminded him that another young cousin named Winthrop had died of kidney disease. Abby felt protective toward her vulnerable son and once said of him, “Abuse only makes him angry and much worse, while for love and kind treatment he will do anything.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Nelson Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Winthrop Rockefeller · Winthrop Aldrich Rockefeller
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There was something ineffably sad about Winthrop’s youth. Squirming under his father’s stern rigor, he longed for escape to a less-taxing world. Easily distracted, he did poorly at Lincoln and Loomis, where he enjoyed playing practical jokes and chasing girls. A big, handsome, hulking boy—at sixteen he was six-foot-one and weighed 185 pounds—he lacked the energy and drive that came so effortlessly to his more dynamic brothers. Winthrop later admitted that as a Yale undergraduate, he had mastered only two subjects: how to smoke and how to drink. At first, he could not keep down more than three drinks without getting sick: “Unfortunately, I later got over that.” At Yale, he played cards and—committing one of the cardinal Rockefeller sins—began to neglect his account book. In the middle of his freshman year, Winthrop realized that his prodigality might cost him his allowance, and he negotiated a large rescue loan from Babs.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Abby Rockefeller Mauzé · Winthrop Rockefeller · Yale University · Lincoln · Loomis
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During the 1933 summer vacation, he toiled as a roustabout in the Texas oil fields for Humble Oil, which was now owned by Jersey Standard, and he felt more at home doing manual work among these rough, simple men than he had among his Yale classmates: “That was what I had been looking for! … men working with their hands, producing something real.… I was fascinated by everything I saw—I wanted to become part of it, to do what they were doing, to prove to myself that I was as good a man as any of them.” If a tonic for his morale, the Texas adventure did not enhance his school performance, and he continued to favor booze and cards. At one point while Winthrop was in Texas, a New Haven publican named Curly Levine made the mistake of sending him a telegram at West Fifty-fourth Street. Junior read the message and secretly contacted Yale president James R. Angell, who informed him that Curly was mixed up with gambling and shady elements. When confronted, Winthrop broke down and confessed to his horrified parents, “Curly is a Jewish bartender in a speakeasy in New Haven where I have gotten liquor while I was at college.” In his junior year, Winthrop was expelled from college after being discovered in the shower with a young lady.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Winthrop Rockefeller · Standard Oil of New Jersey · Yale University · James R. Angell · Texas · New Haven · West Fifty-fourth Street · Humble Oil · Curly · Curly Levine
EPUB paragraph 34 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
After Yale, Winthrop resumed work for Humble Oil in the Texas fields. When he announced the news, Rockefeller, whatever his reservations, expressed pleasure at a family member being back on the Standard Oil payroll. When Winthrop visited Lakewood to tell him about Humble’s advanced production methods in Texas, the old man listened patiently, then said, “Well, brother … I appreciate that—but I must remind you that the important thing is the figures.” In his amiability, Winthrop reminded people of Rockefeller, and perhaps for that reason he was very sensitive to the contradictions of the old man’s personality: “There was always an indefinable aloofness, a detachment that I cannot describe. He was warm, human and real—his every act was an act of warmth—and yet this other quality was there.” The other brothers did not see this subtle discrepancy between the inner and outer man.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Winthrop Rockefeller · Standard Oil · Yale University · Lakewood · Texas · Humble Oil
EPUB paragraph 35 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
For three years, Winthrop enjoyed the camaraderie of the Texas roustabouts and smoked, drank, and philandered. Winthrop was “big and broad-shouldered, like a friendly young Koala,” said one contemporary magazine writer. In this schizoid existence, he worked and ate with other workers during the week and lived on seventy-five cents an hour, then dined on weekends at a country club with the company president. Winthrop welcomed his transient experience of ordinariness in Texas. As he once noted with regret, if your name is Rockefeller, “you can almost feel the prices rise when you walk into a store.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Winthrop Rockefeller · Texas
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Returning to New York, Winthrop trained at the Chase National Bank, worked for the Socony–Vacuum Oil Company—the former Standard Oil of New York—and served as a vice chairman of the Greater New York Fund. These jobs drew less press attention than his evening prowls through café society. As one reporter remarked, Winthrop “handled all the night life” for the Rockefellers. As his drinking and womanizing crept into gossip columns, Junior scolded him, but Winthrop resented his father’s autocratic manner and attempt to perpetuate what seemed an obsolete way of life. After one quarrel, Winthrop said bitterly, “By God, if I ever have children, I’m going to talk to them, not just make an appointment to see them and then get up after five minutes to go get a haircut.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Winthrop Rockefeller · Standard Oil of New York · Rockefeller family · New York · Vacuum · Chase National Bank · Socony · Greater New York Fund
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In 1948, after dating actress Mary Martin, Winthrop married a voluptuous blonde named Barbara “Bobo” Sears—née Jievute Paulekiute, the daughter of Lithuanian immigrants. Junior and Abby boycotted the Florida wedding, and the marriage scarcely lasted the year. When Winthrop later bought a large spread, Winrock Farm, in Arkansas, Junior found one excuse after another not to visit. Much to the surprise of his family, Winthrop was elected Arkansas governor in 1966, the first Republican to manage that feat in ninety-four years.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Winthrop Rockefeller · Florida · Arkansas · Barbara “Bobo · Mary Martin · Sears—née Jievute Paulekiute · Winrock Farm
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Like Winthrop, David was pudgy as a child but was spared the rough attention of his older brothers. Like a miniature banker, he moved with serene self-confidence and punctiliously kept his account books. Smart, docile, and cherubically round-faced, he was adored by Rockefeller, who loved to croon carols with him at The Casements. As Rockefeller told his son after one of David’s holiday visits, “He is a worthy son of worthy parents, and his grandfather dotes on him.” David reciprocated the affection, calling his grandfather “the least dour man I’ve ever known, constantly smiling, joking, and telling shaggy dog stories.” Senior once told John Yordi that David was the grandchild who most resembled him.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Winthrop Rockefeller · David Rockefeller · The Casements · John Yordi
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As the youngest son, David was solitary, yet he compensated for this by creating a self-contained world, collecting butterflies, moths, beetles, and grasshoppers. (Eventually, he developed a world-famous trove of forty thousand beetles.) By the time he graduated from the Lincoln School, he was, like Rockefeller, outwardly genial and inwardly reserved. Steady and methodical, he experienced no scandals or crises at Harvard, graduating cum laude in 1936 after having written his senior thesis on Fabian socialism. After a postgraduate year at Harvard and another at the London School of Economics, he completed a doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago. Though his thesis, “Unused Resources and Economic Waste,” dealt with issues of corporate concentration that had preoccupied his grandfather, David arrived at free-market conclusions and criticized monopolies as counterproductive. While paying tribute to Standard Oil for imposing order on an anarchic industry, he agreed with the court’s 1911 decision to break up the trust. As he later argued, “Some units [of Standard Oil] are now bigger and better than grandfather could ever have imagined even the whole company would be.” This preference for neoclassical economics reflected changes both in the Rockefeller family and in the American business community.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · David Rockefeller · Standard Oil · University of Chicago · Harvard University · Rockefeller family · Lincoln School · London School of Economics
EPUB paragraph 40 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c34_r1.htm
Upon leaving Chicago, David worked for eighteen months as an unpaid secretary to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia of New York. He had the wisdom to marry a feisty, red-blooded woman, Margaret “Peggy” McGrath, who complemented his more detached personality. She came from a comfortable but not blue-ribbon family and had little tolerance for grandiosity like Nelson’s. With a sometimes fiery temper and activist bent, she donated her time to worthwhile causes, including saving the Maine shoreline, raising cattle, and working on behalf of farmland conservation. David dedicated his career to the Chase Manhattan Bank, rising to the chairman’s post and becoming an eminent, peripatetic international banker. As he told an interviewer, he was “the first member of the family since Grandfather who has had a regular job in a company and has devoted a major part of his time to being in business.”
Names: Nelson Rockefeller · David Rockefeller · New York · Chicago · Fiorello La Guardia · Maine · Margaret “Peggy” McGrath · Chase Manhattan Bank
EPUB paragraph 1 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c35_r1.htm
he world’s richest man never lost the thrifty boyhood habits that had made him the nonpareil of American business. One day at Ormond Beach, he was studying the blazing hearth when he turned to Michael, the butler, and asked, “How long are those sticks of wood?” Fourteen inches, Michael replied. “Do you think they would do just as well if they were cut twelve inches in length?” Michael conceded this was possible. “Then the next time the wood is being sawed have it made twelve inches in length.” Since twelve inches gave sufficient light and heat at less expense, it became the new household standard. His frugality was deeply rooted. One Christmas, he was delighted when his son gave him two dozen golf balls and some fountain pens—his idea of wonderfully practical gifts.
Names: Ormond Beach · Michael
EPUB paragraph 2 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c35_r1.htm
Rockefeller had now lived so long and grown so famous that a number of promoters sought to cash in on his fame. In 1930, Sarah S. Dennen, secretary of the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce in Brooklyn, New York, tracked down the Richford house in which the titan had been born. Wind now blew through the chinks of this tottering clapboard dwelling. She had a vision of sudden riches: She would dismantle the house and ship it to Coney Island, where an estimated five million annual paying customers would tour this new shrine of American capitalism. Cringing at the thought, Rockefeller took legal steps to stop the commercialization of his name. After Dennen had bought and dismembered the structure, Rockefeller’s lawyers marshaled state and local authorities to prevent the house from moving over public highways; the heap of numbered planks made it only as far as Binghamton.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Richford · New York · Coney Island · Brooklyn · Sarah S. Dennen · Binghamton · Coney Island Chamber of Commerce
EPUB paragraph 3 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c35_r1.htm
During the Wall Street boom of the 1920s, Rockefeller took a guilty thrill in playing the stock market, despite Junior’s reproaches. If his son was present when somebody alluded to his trading, Rockefeller, like a naughty child, would shift the subject. As the market surged, he jovially passed out dollar bills as bull-market dividends to companions. After breakfast, he often announced, “Well, I guess I’ll see what I can do to keep the wolf away from the door,” then scurried over to his office to get fresh quotes by telephone or telegraph. When the market either swooped or soared, a messenger tracked Rockefeller down on the golf course to deliver a folded sheet with share prices. Aside from cash, railroad securities, U.S. bonds, and Wall Street loans, Rockefeller retained most of his money in Standard Oil companies and could quote the precise number of shares he held in each of his stocks, even when they ran to five digits.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Standard Oil · United States · Wall Street
EPUB paragraph 4 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c35_r1.htm
Partial to old habits, Rockefeller continued to trade by buying each time a stock declined an eighth of a point or selling on each eighth-point rise. Having relinquished most of his money to Junior, he often borrowed up to twenty million dollars to execute these transactions and occasionally cadged loans from his son. “John,” he said to him one day, “I’ve been following the stock market carefully. I think that if I had a little money, I could use it to make some more. Do you believe you could lend me several hundred thousand dollars?” “Well father,” said Junior wryly, “do you think you are old enough to use it wisely?”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · John
EPUB paragraph 5 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c35_r1.htm
The Rockefellers fared handsomely in the effervescent market of the Roaring Twenties. As the market soared, Junior more than doubled the $450 million he had received, and his assets approached the billion-dollar mark. When the market crashed in October 1929, the Rockefellers were caught by surprise. Ivy Lee convinced Junior of the publicity value of a calming statement from his father. After buying a million shares of Standard of New Jersey, Rockefeller issued a press release that had been scripted by Lee: “These are days when many are discouraged. In the ninety years of my life, depressions have come and gone. Prosperity has always returned, and will again.” In his peroration, he said, “Believing that the fundamental conditions of the country are sound, my son and I have been purchasing sound common stocks for some days.” When the comedian Eddie Cantor was informed that the Rockefellers had resumed buying stocks, he responded with the wisecrack, “Sure, who else had any money left?”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Ivy Lee · Standard Oil of New Jersey · Rockefeller family · Eddie Cantor · Lee · Roaring Twenties
Source: Ron Chernow, Titan. Names and relationships retain the full atlas’s extraction limits. Map points are references; historical sites and regions can be approximate. Open the full interactive atlas.