Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was born on July 8, 1908, in Bar Harbor, Maine, the third of six children of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller and John D. Rockefeller Jr.John D. Rockefeller Jr.John D. Rockefeller Jr. (1874–1960) was an American philanthropist and the only son of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller. He devoted most of his life to philanthropy and public affairs, giving away about $537 million in total; he led the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, built Rockefeller Center in New York and paid for the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York. In 1914 the Ludlow Massacre at the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, controlled by his family, brought him nationwide criticism.Open the full entry; he shared a birthday with his grandfather, John D. RockefellerJohn D. RockefellerJohn D. Rockefeller (1839–1937) was an American entrepreneur and philanthropist. In 1870 he and his partners founded Standard Oil, which through mergers and the trust form of organization grew into one of the earliest large trusts in the United States, and its business methods and organizational form drew wide controversy. After withdrawing from day-to-day management in 1896, he turned to organized philanthropy on a large scale, founding institutions including the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the General Education Board and The Rockefeller Foundation.Open the full entry. He graduated in 1926 from the Lincoln School, affiliated with Teachers College of Columbia University, and in 1930 graduated with honors from Dartmouth CollegeDartmouth CollegeDartmouth College is a private institution of higher education in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded by Eleazar Wheelock, it received a royal charter on December 13, 1769. The 1819 Supreme Court ruling in Dartmouth College v. Woodward preserved its private status. Alongside undergraduate liberal arts education, Dartmouth includes the Geisel, Thayer, Tuck and Guarini schools. It enrolled 7,273 students in fall 2025 and held a $9 billion endowment at June 30, 2025. Sian Leah Beilock, in office since June 2023, remained president as of October 2026.Open the full entry with a bachelor’s degree in economics, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.⁠[1][2][1][1]

In June 1930, Rockefeller married Mary Todhunter Clark in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania; they divorced in 1962. After college he took part in the family’s real estate, banking and philanthropic activities, and his main business interests gradually centered on Rockefeller Center and Latin America. During the construction of Rockefeller Center, he dealt with the artists commissioned to decorate the complex, including the controversial Diego Rivera, and helped find tenants.⁠[1][1][1][2]

In 1933, Rockefeller became a member of the Westchester County Board of Health in New York, the beginning of his public service.⁠[1]

In 1935, out of interest in international affairs and American business abroad, Rockefeller became a director of Creole Petroleum Company, the Venezuelan subsidiary of Standard OilStandard OilStandard Oil was an oil company founded in 1870 in Cleveland, Ohio, by John D. Rockefeller and others. Through mergers and expansion, and organizational forms including the trust of 1882 and the New Jersey holding company of 1899, it at one time controlled most of the refining capacity in the United States. In 1911 the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of its holding company under the Sherman Anti-trust Act, and the companies split off from it later evolved into oil companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron.Open the full entry of New Jersey, beginning his long engagement with Latin America. He traveled to Latin America in 1937 and 1939 to study the region’s economic, social and political conditions.⁠[1][1]

In 1938, at 29, Rockefeller became president of Rockefeller Center.⁠[1][2]

In 1940, Rockefeller and his four brothers formed the Rockefeller Brothers Fund to carry out a wide range of philanthropic activities.⁠[1]

After his 1939 trip to Latin America, he submitted a memorandum to President Franklin D. Roosevelt expressing concern about Nazi penetration of Latin America and recommending cooperation with the nations of the Western Hemisphere to help raise living standards there. Largely because of this memorandum, Roosevelt asked him in August 1940 to organize and head the Office of Inter-American Affairs. He served as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs until December 1944; it was his first full-time public post.⁠[1][1][1][1]

On December 20, 1944, Rockefeller was appointed and took office as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs (the Western Hemisphere). In February 1945 he attended the Inter-American Conference on Problems of War and Peace in Mexico City, which adopted the Act of Chapultepec, establishing a framework for cooperation among the nations of the Western Hemisphere and the principle that an attack on one would be regarded as an attack on all, to be resisted jointly.⁠[3][1][1]

The same year, he attended the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, where he argued for allowing regional pacts within the framework of the United Nations, a position that was accepted.⁠[1][1]

In August 1945, Rockefeller resigned as Assistant Secretary of State, and his tenure ended on August 17.⁠[1][3]

After returning to New York in 1946, Rockefeller became chairman of the board of Rockefeller Center and pushed for the expansion of the complex. That July, the Rockefeller brothers set up the American International Association for Economic and Social Development (AIA), a philanthropic organization that funded nonprofit health, education and agriculture programs in poor areas of Latin America; he served as AIA’s president from 1946 to 1953 and from 1957 to 1958.⁠[1][1][1]

In 1947, Rockefeller founded the International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC), hoping to raise living standards abroad through new economic enterprises. IBEC initially focused on Latin America and later expanded to other regions; he served as its president from 1947 to 1953 and from 1956 to 1958.⁠[1][1]

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman asked Rockefeller to chair the International Development Advisory Board, which made policy recommendations for the Point Four Program of technical assistance to developing countries. The board’s final report, Partners in Progress, became the basic blueprint for U.S. foreign aid programs.⁠[1][1][1]

In November 1952, President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Rockefeller to chair the President’s Advisory Committee on Government Organization to study ways of making the executive branch more efficient. He proposed 13 reorganization plans, 10 of which were approved by Congress, involving the Department of Defense, the Department of Agriculture and the Office of Defense Mobilization, and leading to the creation of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW).⁠[1][1][1]

In June 1953, Rockefeller was appointed Under Secretary of the newly created Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He was active in the department’s legislative work, and measures he championed extended Social Security coverage to an additional 10 million people.⁠[1][1]

In 1954, Rockefeller left HEW to become Special Assistant to the President for Foreign Affairs. In that role he played a key part in developing the “Open Skies” concept, which proposed verifying national armaments through mutual aerial reconnaissance; in 1955 he accompanied Eisenhower to the Geneva Summit, where the president presented the proposal. He resigned as special assistant at the end of 1955.⁠[1][1][1]

After years in appointed posts, Rockefeller ran for elective office for the first time in 1958, defeating incumbent governor Averell Harriman on November 4 to become governor of New York. During the campaign he presented an affable style; “Hi Ya, Fella” became his signature greeting and “Rocky” his nickname, and he spent heavily from his personal fortune on the campaign. He took office on January 1, 1959.⁠[1][2][2][4]

A progressive Republican, Rockefeller as governor greatly expanded the role of state government in education, environmental protection, transportation, housing, welfare and the arts. He built low-income housing, schools, hospitals and roads, as well as large projects such as the Albany Mall, which later became the seat of state government; built up the vast State University of New York (SUNY) system and a modern highway network; and spent heavily through complex financing arrangements. In 1960, New York became one of the first states to establish a state arts council. During his tenure the state legislature ratified the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.⁠[1][2][2][1][4]

He was reelected three times, in 1962, 1966 and 1970.⁠[4]

Rockefeller sought the Republican presidential nomination three times, in 1960, 1964 and 1968, without success. In 1960 he lost to Richard Nixon; in 1964 he ultimately gave way to Barry Goldwater, with controversy over his second marriage also hurting his chances. His liberal positions on social issues and domestic policy, including civil rights, were out of step with the Republican Party’s overall shift to the right at the time, and the term “Rockefeller Republican” came to denote Republicans who were liberal on domestic policy and hawkish on foreign policy.⁠[1][2][2][2][2]

In May 1963, Rockefeller married Margaretta (Happy) Fitler Murphy at the home of his brother Laurance in Pocantico Hills, New York.⁠[1]

In the later part of his governorship, Rockefeller moved gradually to the right. In 1971 he decided to use force to end the uprising at Attica prison, drawing harsh criticism from the left and the press. Thereafter he campaigned on “law and order,” cracked down on welfare fraud and enacted tough drug laws imposing long prison sentences even for minor offenses. These measures, together with the widespread patronage politics and budget overruns of New York politics during his tenure, partly overshadowed the achievements of his 15 years as governor.⁠[2][2][2][2]

On December 18, 1973, Rockefeller resigned as governor of New York.⁠[4][1]

After Richard Nixon resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, and Gerald R. Ford succeeded him, the vice presidency became vacant. On August 20, Ford nominated Rockefeller for vice president under the Twenty-fifth Amendment; the nomination message survives in the Senate records at the National Archives. It was the second time the amendment had been used to fill a vacancy in the vice presidency, the first being Nixon’s nomination of Ford in 1973.⁠[5][5][6][6][7]

Unlike Ford’s swift confirmation, Rockefeller’s hearings dragged on because of his presidential ambitions and financial dealings, turning into a lengthy examination of the Rockefeller family’s wealth and its hidden influence. Testifying before a Senate committee, he said that the notion of the family wielding power was a “myth” and that he held no economic power. When congressional leaders hinted that the vote might be put off until the new Congress the following year, Ford urged Congress to confirm him promptly.⁠[5][2][2][5][5]

The Senate voted to confirm Rockefeller’s nomination on December 10, 1974, and the House on December 19. Two hours after the House vote, he was sworn in as vice president in the Senate chamber. Television cameras installed for a possible impeachment trial of Nixon broadcast the ceremony, the first time television coverage had been allowed in the Senate chamber.⁠[5][7][7]

As vice president, Rockefeller chaired the president’s Domestic Council and headed a commission investigating the domestic activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Formally the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States and commonly known as the Rockefeller Commission, it issued its report in June 1975, covering CIA mail opening, Operation CHAOS and allegations relating to the Kennedy assassination, among other matters. He also promoted the short-lived idea of an Energy Independence Authority and continued his involvement with the National Commission on Water Quality, which he had chaired during the Nixon years.⁠[1][8][8][8][8][8][1]

Ford decided not to keep Rockefeller as his running mate for the 1976 reelection campaign, and Rockefeller’s term as vice president ended on January 20, 1977. After leaving office, he founded Nelson Rockefeller Collection, Inc., an art reproduction company that sold high-end limited-edition reproductions through catalogs and a retail store in Manhattan.⁠[2][1][1]

Rockefeller died in New York City on January 26, 1979.⁠[1]

A longtime supporter of the arts, Rockefeller served successively as a trustee, treasurer, president and chairman of the board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which his mother had helped found. In 1954 he founded the Museum of Primitive Art, which collected Indigenous art of the Americas, Africa and Oceania as well as early Asian and European art; after the museum closed in the late 1960s, he arranged for its collection to be transferred to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.⁠[1][1][1]

He began systematically building a personal art collection in the late 1930s and over the next four decades acquired a large number of well-known works of modern art and Mexican folk art, which he bequeathed to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Antonio Museum of Art in Texas, respectively.⁠[1]