The Right Places (9 page)

Even Jay's father, John D. Rockefeller III, managed to do himself proud at the party—and to some people's surprise. The senior Rockefeller is the shyest, the most withdrawn and introspective of the five Rockefeller brothers (which include Nelson, David, Winthrop, and Laurance). At large gatherings, Mr. Rockefeller often seems to be ill at ease, and this has been interpreted as snobbishness, or at least aristocratic aloofness. But at his son's picnic he mingled right in with the West Virginia farm folk, many of whom had never set foot outside their corner of the state. At the Rockefeller family estate in New York's Westchester County, John D. Three, as they call him, is something of a gentleman farmer, and that afternoon, talking with one of Jay's new neighbors, Mr. Rockefeller was overheard saying, “Why, I had that exact same trouble with my pigs!” The neighbors all wanted
to know where Mr. Rockefeller was staying “out here in these hills and hollows,” and he explained that he was putting up at the Green-brier Hotel. Many West Virginians may be poor, but they are fiercely proud of their Southern hospitality, and the Pocahontas County farmers said to Mr. Rockefeller, “Now don't you waste your money any more at that Greenbrier. My Lord, they'll charge you forty dollars a day for a
room!
Next time, you-all just come and stay with
us
.”

“And if you get to New York,” replied John D. Rockefeller III earnestly, “you-all come and stay with
me
.” Hearing this, Jay Rockefeller took his father aside and said, “Dad, down here they take these things literally. If you keep talking like that, you're going to have a whole slew of West Virginia farmers for house guests in New York.”

Though Jay and Sharon Rockefeller have lived in West Virginia since 1964, enthusiastically insisting all the while that they find the place the most fascinating, challenging, and lovely in all the world, and that they would not willingly live anyplace else, there is still something outwardly a bit incongruous—to some of their parents' generation, at least—in the fact that these two enormously handsome and rich young people would have chosen this hardscrabble state in which to settle and make their future. Did they do so solely for
political
reasons? Bobby Kennedy, a few years ago, to establish himself politically, moved to New York City. Do the Rockefellers
really
like it here, or is there some hidden ulterior motive? Not long ago, out campaigning for governor against the incumbent Republican, Arch Moore, Jay Rockefeller tapped on the front door of a tiny house in a little West Virginia town named Sod (pop. 63). An elderly person, whose head was wrapped in a blue kerchief, looked pleased when she recognized her caller, and then complained that her toes were most certainly giving her misery.

Sod, West Virginia, is perhaps an even more woebegone place than its name implies. A derelict washing machine stood on the porch of the woman's tarpaper house, and behind the house an exhausted-looking privy leaned against a tree. A skinny chicken pecked in the dirt outside. In his J. Press jacket, button-down shirt, gray flannel slacks, Church's shoes, and a “sincere” regimental-striped necktie (for reasons he admits are political, Jay Rockefeller adopts the 1950s-collegiate style of dress), the Democratic candidate for governor was telling this
particular voter about his dream of turning Lincoln County (one of the state's very poorest) into—well, into something maybe a little better. Down the road, a sign painted on an abandoned barn commanded:
CHEW MAIL POUCH TOBACCO
!

“The answer is to attract new industry to the area,” Jay Rockefeller was saying, and the old woman was nodding, agreeing, envisioning new industry coming to Sod. Across the street, in a sweater and skirt and a purple wool coat with shiny silver buttons—no jewelry other than her small emerald engagement ring, no visible makeup—Sharon Percy Rockefeller was standing in the used-car lot next to Mitchell's Esso station, listening with sympathy to a man who had had an ear, an eye, and half of his face blown away in a mining accident. That was over a year ago, he said, and he had still had no help from welfare.

The contrast between the surroundings of the young Rockefellers and their relatives in the North is almost grotesquely sharp. Five hundred miles away, back at Pocantico Hills, the Rockefeller family compound in Tarrytown, New York (why was it so much a part of the old style of the rich to cluster together in sealed-off family fiefdoms, one wonders?) there is, among other things, the playhouse. This is the playhouse where Jay Rockefeller and his sisters played when they were children. The playhouse itself is three stories high, with an indoor swimming pool (of course there is an outdoor one as well), a four-lane bowling alley, a squash court, a gymnasium, and an embarrassment of other pleasures including a tennis court and a golf course. The playhouse, in other words, is a private Rockefeller country club—for the children.

All around, on the surrounding acres of the estate (collectively, the Rockefellers are the biggest private propertyholders in Westchester), each Rockefeller has his own house, each with its
own
pool,
own
tennis courts. Jay Rockefeller's mother, the former Blanchette Ferry Hooker, inherited two fortunes of her own—one from the Ferry Seed Company, and another from the Hooker Electrochemical Company. Her father was so keen on tennis for his four daughters that he hired a private tennis professional to come and live on the Hookers' Greenwich estate. Jay Rockefeller's father landscaped his share of Pocantico Hills so that, even though there are other houses nearby—even a
fair-sized town—he can stand at any point on his property and have an uninterrupted view of woods, river, hills, and sky. He does not like to have other structures mar his vista, much less billboards that urge him to chew Mail Pouch Tobacco. Why, then—it is impossible not to ask—when they could have so much else, are the young Rockefellers
here
, in
this
godforsaken place? And, while here, why are they doing what they're doing? Even John D. Three doesn't seem quite to understand. At his son's Pocahontas County picnic, Jay asked his father, “Dad, what do you think of what I'm doing down here?” His father looked briefly bewildered, and then replied, “Well, I think what you're doing is very nice—but does it have to be in
politics?
”

Jay Rockefeller shrugs, and says, “My father represents a set of values that just don't have much meaning any more.”

The Rockefellers have long had, as a family, a strong sense of mission. They have demonstrated a crusading spirit which—with the various Rockefeller foundations, grants, restorations, and other benefactions—has seemed aimed specifically at trying to set the ills of the world to rights. They have become America's arch-do-gooders. Whereas the Ford Foundation, for example, was unabashedly created as a mechanism to help the heirs of Henry Ford escape huge inheritance taxes, the Rockefeller family philanthropies have always seemed sincerely more high-minded, designed to help the needy and deserving. It has been said that the Rockefellers have approached philanthropy this way out of a sense of penance and a Protestant sense of guilt over the inequities dealt out by the first John D. Rockefeller in the process of making himself the richest man in the world. Though the first John D. enjoyed throwing shiny new dimes to poor children when they knelt begging in his path, there were a great many other people who crossed his life who met with nothing short of disaster. And, considering the respectability and eminence and lofty worthiness of today's Rockefellers, it is hard to believe that barely a generation ago Mrs. David Lion Gardiner, dowager of New York's venerable Gardiner clan, gathered her family about her and said—referring specifically to the five Rockefeller brothers—“No Gardiner will ever play with the grandchildren of a gangster.” Today, of course, the Rockefeller name is
associated with industrial and banking efficiency and integrity, with civic rectitude and duty, with the improvement of international relations and the human condition in general, and with vast patronage of the arts, medicine, and science.

At the same time, there is said to be another side to the Rockefeller coin—and coin is something the Rockefellers have much of—which is less apparent, yet far more concentrated, far less desirable, even sinister. There is a theory, more widely held than most people realize, that the Rockefellers want nothing more nor less than to divide up the entire world between various members of their family. They want in fact to be kings, controllers of all they survey, and are systematically nibbling away at this planet's real estate until one day it will all belong to them. One of the problems young Jay Rockefeller faced in his campaign for the governorship of West Virginia is that he has been cited as one of the key figures in the international Rockefeller conspiracy to rule the world. In fact, his opponents in the state actually circulated literature to this effect. To the easily frightened, this is a frightening notion.

Among the items supporting the conspiracy theory are these: Nelson Rockefeller, as governor of New York, has control of that state. Uncle Nelson, furthermore, has developed large landholdings in Venezuela, giving him more than a small amount of leverage in that country, and elsewhere in South America. Uncle Winthrop, in the meantime, was until recently governor of Arkansas, is still a political force there, and a large landholder.

Uncle Laurance has concentrated his efforts on developing large resort hotels occupying considerable acreage in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii. New Rockefeller resort tentacles have been stretching out elsewhere in the South Pacific. Uncle David, the best friend one could possibly have at the Chase Manhattan Bank (since he's chairman of it), is not only an awesome power in Wall Street but one of the two or three most powerful commercial banking figures in the world. David has also spread his interests to include the film and entertainment industry. Father John D. Three, while his main thrust has been in the direction of philanthropy, has also been a key figure behind, in addition to other things, the restoration of Williamsburg, Virginia. And now with young Jay making a bid to take over
West
Virginia—well, conspiracy or no, it is certainly true that Rockefellers have spread their activities across a great deal of the earth's territory.

But people who know young Jay Rockefeller merely laugh at this sort of talk. Jay, they point out, has always been an intensely public-spirited young man. He has also, from early boyhood, wanted desperately to be something other than a rich man's son, the fourth-generation bearer of a celebrated name. He has wanted to succeed—indeed, to be famous—in his own right. “Anybody who goes into politics has to have a pretty big ego,” says one of his friends, “and I'm sure Jay's is one of the biggest around. His ego gives him self-confidence, makes the guy positive he'll win at whatever he sets out to do. At the same time, his ego doesn't
show
—the way, for example, the Kennedy ego always showed and was vaguely offensive. He's a whole new kind of
today
politician.”

This ego, and this ambition, Jay Rockefeller doubtless inherited from his mother. Even Jay's wife, who knows her mother-in-law well, admits that there is more of Blanchette Rockefeller in Jay than there is of John D. Three. Blanchette Rockefeller, for example, was the first distaff Rockefeller to merit her own paragraph in
Who's Who
, where she is listed as an “organization executive,” in connection with her many trusteeships—of New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Community Service Society, the Brearley School, Vassar College, the Metropolitan Opera Guild, and the New York Philharmonic. It is from his mother, too, that Jay gets his hail-fellow personality, and his natural athletic ability—neither of which John D. Three possesses. Neither mother nor son is willing to sit back and just be a Rockefeller, a fat cat, and there are moments when Jay Rockefeller seems actually embarrassed by the name he bears. “Damn it, it's in
songs!
” he says. (“… And if I never had a dime, I'd be rich as Rockefeller.…”) And not long ago, caught short of cash in a Washington restaurant, Jay Rockefeller tried to pay his bill with a personal check. The waiter refused to believe he was who he said he was, and only a helpful friend with a credit card averted the possibility that the red-faced Jay might have been sent into the kitchen to wash dishes. As a bachelor, living in Washington, he also developed a cynical approach to the
girls he dated. “I'd always have to ask myself, with each new girl, is she going out with the name, the money, or the guy?” he says.

Jay Rockefeller had spent no more than three years as a Harvard undergraduate when the urge to make something special of himself overtook him and, without graduating, he took off for Japan for three years of study at the International Christian University in Tokyo. Here he worked as an English instructor and—a language whiz—became fluent in both reading and writing Japanese. He then returned to Harvard, graduated with a degree in Far Eastern affairs and languages, and went on to Yale to study Chinese.

Like many other young Americans during the early days of the Kennedy Administration, Jay Rockefeller became excited about the work the Peace Corps was doing. He joined the Corps in the summer of 1962, becoming a special assistant to the director, Sargent Shriver, and, appropriately, working as a recruiting officer for Peace Corps posts in the Far East. (Of all the Kennedy clan he is said still to admire Shriver the most, though Jay is too politic to say so.) A year later, he moved on to the State Department, again concentrating on Asian affairs. During these Washington years, Jay Rockefeller lived—with his friend Bill Wister (of the very proper Philadelphia Wisters)—in a handsome town house on Volta Place with a heated pool behind it and a park in front of it where Jay and Bill and their friends played tennis and touch football on weekends. While there, Jay himself gained something of a reputation. He was known as a fellow who would take one girl to a party, meet another one there, and—with no more than an offhand invitation to the second girl to visit “the family shack”—whip her off to Volta Place in his XK–E, after quickly phoning Bill Wister to tell him to get lost. “In those days,” says one girl who dated him, “even though it was very clear that he knew a lot about the Orient, he was so cocky and vain and arrogant that—well, if he hadn't been so good-looking
and
a Rockefeller besides—I'd have hated him. In fact, I think I did hate him.”