Nelson Rockefeller

Biography

Nelson Rockefeller was born in Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1908, the son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and grandson of the Standard Oil co-founder. He graduated in economics from Dartmouth College in 1930 and worked in family businesses, including Chase National Bank, Creole Petroleum in Venezuela, and Rockefeller Center, which he led as president and later chairman. A lifelong art collector, he was a trustee and twice president of the Museum of Modern Art, and with his brothers he set up the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1940.

Franklin Roosevelt made him Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in 1940, and he was assistant secretary of state for American republic affairs in 1944-1945. In 1947 he founded the International Basic Economy Corporation to promote development in Latin America. Under Eisenhower he was the first under secretary of health, education and welfare (1953-1954).

Rockefeller defeated Averell Harriman to become governor of New York in 1958 and was re-elected three times. He greatly expanded the State University of New York, built the Empire State Plaza in Albany, and in September 1971 ordered state police and National Guard troops to retake Attica prison from rioting inmates, an assault in which 39 people, including ten hostages, died. The leader of the party's liberal wing, he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964 and 1968 without success, extracting platform concessions from Richard Nixon in the 1960 Treaty of Fifth Avenue.

Gerald Ford appointed him vice president in December 1974, and in 1975 he chaired the commission on CIA activities within the United States. He was not on the 1976 ticket, left office in 1977, and died in New York in 1979.