David Rockefeller - Memoirs

D AVID R OCKEFELLER was chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Chase bank for many years. He died in 2017, at the age of 101.

2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright 2002, 2003 by David Rockefeller

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

R ANDOM H OUSE T RADE P APERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published in hardcover and in a slightly different form, by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2002.

A leatherbound, signed first edition of this work has been published by the Easton Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rockefeller, David.
Memoirs / David Rockefeller.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78938-9
1. Rockefeller, David. 2. BankersUnited StatesBiography. 3. Chase Manhattan Bank. 4. Banks and bankingUnited StatesHistory. I. Title.
HG2463.R6 A3 2002 332.1092dc21

[B] 2002024800

Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

v3.1_r1

To the memory of my mother,

ABBY ALDRICH ROCKEFELLER,

and my wife,

PEGGY McGRATH ROCKEFELLER

T here is a picture of all the men in the family waiting at the Tarrytown station for the train carrying Grandfathers casket from his winter home in Ormond Beach, Florida. He died quietly in his bed on May 23, 1937, at the age of ninety-seven. While the official cause of death was sclerotic myocarditis, it would be simpler to say he died of old age. I had known him as Grandfather, not the robber baron or great philanthropist of the history books. He had been a constant presence in my childhood: benign, indulgent, revered by my father, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and by the family as a whole.

Looking at that picture today, I find it remarkable how well it captured our relationships with one another, where we were in life, and, perhaps, where we would all be going.

John, characteristically, stands on the periphery. Thirty-one years old, he is the oldest son, inheritor of the dynastic name. After he graduated from Princeton, Father put him on the boards of many family institutions, among them the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, and Colonial Williamsburg, grooming him to be the family leader, but he is shy and uncertain of his abilities.

Nelson, also characteristically, has managed to situate himself at the exact center of the picture and stares authoritatively at the camera. At twenty-nine he will soon become president of Rockefeller Center.

Laurance, twenty-seven, the philosopher and businessman, gazes into the middle distance. He was emerging as a leading investor in the aviation industry and, with Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War I flying ace, would soon buy a large stake in Eastern Airlines.

Winthrop is the handsomest. Somehow Mothers Aldrich featureswhich one might describe as having a lot of charactercombined with the Rockefeller genes to produce almost movie-star good looks. Win is the most troubled of us and never quite fitted in. Now twenty-five, he is working as a roughneck in the Texas oil fields.

I am the youngest, twenty-one years old, and look very wet behind the ears. I have just completed my first year of graduate work in economics at Harvard and will leave that summer to continue my studies at the London School of Economics.

Father, beginning to show his sixty-three years, presides over us all, completely forthright, a friendly, kind face. Perhaps a little distant.

We brought Grandfather back to the mansion that he and Father had built twenty-five years earlier on the family estate at Pocantico Hills. Called Kykuit, the Dutch word for lookout, its hilltop site commands a magnificent view of the Hudson River. The next day, with only immediate family and a few close friends present, we held a service for him. I remember it was a beautiful spring day, the French doors open to the terrace, and the Hudson River a glistening blue below us. His favorite organist, Dr. Archer Gibson, played the large pipe organ in the main hall, on which we used to pretend to perform when we were children. Harry Emerson Fosdick, senior minister of Riverside Church, which was built by Father, gave the eulogy.