She recounted the problems that had afflicted the bank in the 1970s under my chairmanship and the task that I still confronted: “Rockefeller is 62 years of age and must retire as chairman in three years. If it is David Rockefeller who gets the bank where it should be, the job is going to have to be accomplished in pretty short order. . . . Some people have questioned whether running a bank is David Rockefeller’s cup of tea. He has his own ‘final days’ to settle that matter once and for all.”
Carol Loomis had identified the challenge that lay before me, and I was comfortable with her words. I knew we were building a stronger and better bank, and I invited her to return in three years to see with her own eyes the Chase turnaround.
*Simon’s comment sounded like revenge for President Nixon’s having asked me to serve as Secretary of the Treasury after George Shultz’s resignation in 1973. As Treasury undersecretary, Simon thought he should have been the first choice. Reportedly, he was deeply offended that he got the job only after I had declined.
CHAPTER 22
FAMILY TURMOIL
In March 1976, The Rockefellers: An American Dynasty was published and soon became a best-seller.
Written by Peter Collier and David Horowitz, erstwhile editors of the radical magazine Ramparts, the book was a disparaging account of my family as seen through the lens of Marxist theory and counterculture politics.*
A blend of fact and fiction (mostly the latter) that depicted us as the incarnation of capitalist greed and the cause of much that was wrong with contemporary American and global society, the book was carelessly researched, based on questionable sources of information, and contained little about the first three generations of the family that had not already been dealt with by earlier muckrakers of the left and the right. However, it was the section on the “cousins”—my children, nieces, and nephews—that was quite sensational, and particularly troubling to me.
The authors, posing as sympathetic friends, met with a number of cousins. They encouraged them to speak freely about their disenchantment with the Rockefeller family and its institutions, and their estrangement from their parents, in some cases promising confidentiality. Those interviews formed the core of the book, focusing on the personal lives and struggles of the younger generation of my family, including five of my own children. The portrait drawn by Collier and Horowitz showed an unhappy, conflicted group of people, many of them attracted to radical social causes and revolutionary ideas, who were eager to distance themselves from their reactionary and unsympathetic parents. After the book was published, my children told Peggy and me that the authors had misled them about their real intentions, claiming they were writing a book on philanthropy and promising that nothing they said would be printed without their permission. They said their words had been purposely misconstrued to fit the ideological framework of the writers, not the facts of their own lives. Nonetheless, there had to be some truth in what they said, which made the book very painful reading for Peggy and me.
Ironically, by the time the book appeared in 1976, all of our children had graduated from college, and even those who had been active in radical politics during their undergraduate days had long since moved on with their lives. Thus, while the immediacy of these rancorous issues, related to the Vietnam War and the struggle for social justice, had dissipated, all of us—each of our children as well as Peggy and me—had to face, as we never had before, the existence of several basic differences and strong tensions that had never been resolved.
As we began to deal with these issues more calmly in the mid-1970s, we all realized that despite our very real differences we shared a number of common desires: to create a more just world that was free of racial intolerance and bigotry, to eliminate poverty, to improve education, and to figure out how the human race could survive without destroying the environment.
It took some time for that realization to sink in, but when it did, the possibility of a different and more respectful relationship among all of us became stronger. Prior to that time, however, we had gone through a decade where confrontation rather than comity characterized our parent-child relationships.
PROBLEMS OF PARENTHOOD
Peggy and I found it curious that two of our children, Abby and Peggy, were deeply attracted to the revolutionary ideas and causes of the 1960s while the other four were much less involved with the turbulent politics of those years. We had raised all of them according to the same moral principles, based essentially on Christian precepts, that Peggy and I had been brought up to believe in. I am still amazed at how differently each of them responded to their upbringing and to the events of the 1960s.
I have no doubt that my lengthy absences during their early and most formative years had a detrimental effect. Dave, Abby, and Neva, born just before or during my World War II service, spent a good portion of their first years without me. Peggy, a young mother, did her best to give them love and guidance, and they absorbed her passion for nature and music as well as her enthusiastic embrace of life in all its diversity. Peggy, Richard, and Eileen were all born after the war, but even as a junior officer at Chase I traveled a great deal and was often away from home. Thus, with the younger children as well, I was unable to give them the time and attention they needed and deserved.
Peggy found the burdens of motherhood difficult to bear. Although she was a devoted mother and much of the time had an exceptional capacity to communicate with the children, for the first twenty years of our married life she also suffered sporadic periods of acute depression. The children learned to stay away from her while she was in the depths of these black moods. Although Peggy worked assiduously with an excellent psychiatrist and eventually succeeded in largely overcoming her problems, it seems likely that her depression, combined with my heavy work schedule and frequent absences, created insecurities and anxieties for at least some of the children.
Peggy and I were dedicated to being responsible parents and to providing our children with a safe home and a good education. When the children were young, they attended well-known day schools in New York City—the girls went to the Chapin and Brearley and the boys to Buckley—which gave them a solid educational grounding even though they lacked cultural diversity.
We spent most weekends at Hudson Pines in Tarrytown where the children rode horseback, played outdoors, and on rainy or cold days enjoyed the Playhouse, often with friends they had invited. We also took them on trips around the United States and to other parts of the world, as my parents had done with me. Our house was always filled with guests from around the world so that from an early age the children were exposed to a variety of interesting and accomplished people—such as Pablo Casals, the great cellist; Pedro Beltrán, the prime minister of Peru; Nate Pusey, the president of Harvard; and General George Marshall. The children responded well to these visitors, and it was an educational and enjoyable experience for them. Our many contacts with the outside world developed in them a variety of interests—languages, art, the natural world—that they have pursued with great enthusiasm.
In 1952, Father had made provision for my children’s future financial needs by creating a series of irrevocable trusts. In doing this Father followed the same model he had used in creating the 1934 Trust which provided my siblings and me with most of our income. Prior to creating the 1952 Trust, Father asked me how I wanted them structured.
Peggy and I decided that each of our children should receive a modest annual income—beginning at $5,000 at age twenty-one—that would increase every year until they turned thirty. At that time each of them would receive all the income earned by their trust. We also stipulated that, with the approval of the trustees, each could withdraw as much as 50 percent of the principal of the trust once they reached twenty-one. We felt these provisions and Father’s generosity would allow our children to lead independent lives as adults and be able to determine for themselves how best to allocate their own resources.
STRAINED RELATIONSHIPS
Once the children began to leave hom
e for boarding schools in the mid-1950s, our relationships with them began to change. Part of this was the natural consequence of their growing up, an understandable desire to make their own decisions, to find their own way in the world, to establish an identity of their own. However, another part of it involved their discomfort with the Rockefeller name and the traditions, associations, and obligations that membership in the family seemed to imply. Two of our daughters adopted other surnames from Peggy’s side of the family. Today, however, they have reconciled themselves to being part of the Rockefeller family, even to recognizing that the name may have a few advantages!
DAVID, JR.
Our oldest child, David, was the first to leave home when he prepared for college at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Dave had never openly rebelled, but neither had he been particularly close or open with either of his parents. Exeter and Harvard seemed to widen the communications gap. His form of rebellion was aloofness, not outright antagonism.
I have often wondered whether I simply did not have much talent as a father, because my efforts to establish a connection with my children often misfired. In 1965, for instance, I gave Dave a share of my equity in L’Enfant Plaza, a Washington real estate development. It seemed probable the stock would appreciate significantly in value as the buildings were completed and the debt was paid off. I thought the gift would be a good way to pass along significant financial resources to my oldest son, but, more important, I hoped the details of the project itself would interest him and serve as a vehicle for bringing us together in a natural way. Although my gift benefited Dave financially, he showed little interest in learning about L’Enfant or even discussing it with me. Some years later Dave said he regretted that we didn’t have a closer relationship. When I mentioned L’Enfant, he was surprised that bringing us closer had been an important reason for the gift. I realize now that my thinking was somewhat unrealistic given Dave’s attitude toward me at the time, but my intentions were sincere and hopeful.
Dave graduated from Harvard Law School in 1965, then studied economics at Cambridge University before returning to the United States and marrying in 1968. He decided to remain in the Boston area and to follow his interests in music and arts education rather than return to New York for a career in business or the law. He worked for the Boston Symphony Orchestra for a number of years, served on the boards of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio, and chaired an important arts education panel that was partially supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
Dave, like most members of his generation, rejected the family’s traditional Republicanism. He preferred a politics that placed more emphasis on protecting the environment, ensuring civil rights for all citizens, and ending the war in Vietnam. In the late 1960s he helped finance a “vigorously antiestablishment” Boston weekly, The Real Paper, along with a number of his contemporaries who had similar views, including William Weld, a future governor of Massachusetts, and Mortimer Zuckerman, who became a successful publisher and real estate developer. (Ironically, years later I would become a business partner of Mort’s in Boston Properties, his very successful real estate investment trust.) While personal relations with Dave were always pleasant, he remained distant until later in life when, I am happy to say, our relationship has blossomed, and we have become very close.
ABBY
Abby was the most rebellious and strong-willed of all our children. From her earliest childhood Abby had forceful and even passionate reactions to most things she encountered. When Peggy started to wean her from breast-feeding, Abby decided to switch immediately to the bottle, giving her mother considerable discomfort. But she always shared her parents’ love of nature. As a teenager she became an ardent bird watcher and could imitate their songs so convincingly that birds would actually respond to her call.
Abby and her mother were very close when Abby was a child. Each admired the other’s independence and willingness to defy convention. But both of them had strong personalities, so while they adored each other, they engaged in fierce verbal battles. Abby disliked the formality of school but loved music and played the cello with great feeling. In 1963 she enrolled in the New England Conservatory of Music to develop her talent. She also met a number of teachers who encouraged her growing disenchantment with “the inequities of American life.” She was drawn to Marxism, became an ardent admirer of Fidel Castro, and joined the Socialist Workers Party for a brief time. As the United States strengthened its military commitment to Vietnam, Abby became a financial backer of antiwar organizations, including Ramparts magazine, and worked as a draft resistance counselor in Boston.
Abby’s deepest commitment came to be feminism. In 1967 she vowed never again to wear a dress as a protest against women’s second-class status in society. New York magazine featured her in a story on “Cell 16,” the Women’s Liberation Group to which she belonged in Cambridge. Abby was described as a “sexual segregationist” and quoted as saying that “love between a man and a woman is debilitating and counterrevolutionary.” (Abby denies ever having said this.) Whenever she came home during those years, she would engage us in heated arguments about the capitalist system and our family’s continuing complicity in its sins. Our dinners together often ended with angry words.
In the early 1970s, Abby’s interests began to shift toward environmental and ecological issues. Most surprising, given her disdain for the private enterprise system, she set up a company to manufacture and market a Swedish-designed composting toilet, the clivus multrum, which was in limited production by early 1974. Peggy and I were more than a bit amazed by Abby’s commercial interest but not surprised by the passionate way in which she pursued it.
Despite the vehemence of Abby’s rebellion and her angry rejection of most things her family and I stood for, I believe that in her heart of hearts she never forgot the close relationship she had with her mother as a child or the times she and I had spent looking for Caddis fly larvae and whirligig beetles in our pond at Pocantico. For most of the 1960s and well into the 1970s, however, our relations with Abby were, to say the least, tempestuous.
Even when her behavior was most exasperating, her mother would say to me, “Never forget, if anything happens to either of us, Abby will always be there.” Sure enough, at the most critical moments in my life, Abby has always provided me with her full measure of love and support.
NEVA
Neva was just thirteen months younger than Abby. As children they shared a room and were inseparable, although their personalities were very different. Abby was the dominant, forceful leader. Neva played a more passive role but was extremely intelligent and an avid reader. Often she would outsmart her older sister, who envied Neva’s ability to read fast and do well at school.
It was unfortunate that Neva’s maternal grandmother, for whom Neva was named, never concealed the fact that she had hoped Neva would be a boy. Both she and Peggy’s older sister, Eileen, made it clear that they adored Abby, who for them could do no wrong, while ignoring and disparaging Neva. This was very hurtful and unfair to Neva.
As a teenager Neva was never openly rebellious but preferred to keep her distance from Peggy and me. She graduated from Concord Academy in 1962 and went on to Radcliffe. Although Abby was living close by in Cambridge, the two of them had had a falling out and rarely saw each other. Thus, while Neva shared Abby’s concern for the environment, civil rights, and other social causes, she never became personally involved with radical groups. Neva graduated in 1966, just before the most intense period of student activism broke over the nation’s campuses. She married a Harvard professor later that same year and within a few years became the mother of our first grandson and granddaughter.
Neva, ever the intellectual, was drawn to the ideas of R. Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome, whom she first met at the Dartmouth Conference meeting in Leningrad in the summer of 1964, on the same trip that we met Khrushchev in the Kremlin. Neva was particularly intrigued by “Bucky” Fuller’s c
ompelling system of technologies that would maximize the social uses of the world’s energy resources and remained in contact with him for a number of years. Subsequently, Neva followed in my footsteps by taking a doctorate in economics, and then she specialized in the connections between poverty and environmental degradation. Neva also joined me as a trustee of The Rockefeller University in the late 1970s. In Seal Harbor, where she and her family spent the summer, she developed a great interest in gardening and eventually succeeded her mother as the manager of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden.
PEGGY
Peggy entered Radcliffe in the fall of 1965, and her undergraduate years coincided with the most intense period of student protest and the rise of the counterculture. While she quickly fell under Abby’s spell and became an active supporter of a number of antiwar organizations, Peggy’s own powerful sense of social justice drove her to question the fairness of a system that provided her with enormous wealth and opportunity while consigning millions of others to the worst kind of poverty.
Abby’s fiery exhortations influenced Peggy’s thinking on many subjects, but she discovered the nature of poverty by herself while working in Brazil in the mid-1960s. Our friends Israel and Lina Klabin invited Peggy to visit them in Rio de Janeiro the summer before she entered college. Peggy accepted their invitation but only on the condition that she could “do something worthwhile” during her stay. Shortly after her arrival, Peggy joined an anthropological team that was studying the favelas, or shanty towns, of Rio de Janeiro. Finding the work compelling, she returned the two following summers. She became fluent in Portuguese and moved in with a favela family for her final summer in Brazil. I happened to pass through Rio on a Chase business trip that summer, and Peggy invited me to share a meal with her and “her family” in the favela. Peggy had developed a warm relationship with her host family, who treated her as one of their own daughters.
Memoirs Page 42