Memoirs

by David Rockefeller

  The duel between John and Nelson flared up again over a grant proposal for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring of 1978. Nelson asked that the Met be placed on the Creel Committee list for a project that would honor his son, Michael, who had been lost on an anthropological expedition to Papua New Guinea in 1961. Nelson had donated his important collection of primitive art, including a number of artifacts collected by Michael, to the Met. The museum created a new wing to house the collection and named it in Michael’s memory. It was a wonderful solution: Nelson’s collection had a permanent home, it was a splendid tribute to Michael, and a conspicuous gap had been filled in the Met’s own collection.

  The family responded generously to Nelson’s initiative. Martha Baird provided most of the funds for construction of the new wing. The RBF contributed almost $1.5 million for the installation and permanent maintenance of the collection, and a number of other family members, including Laurance and me, also supported the project. However, there had been cost overruns that Nelson could not meet, and he asked the RBF to consider a supplemental capital grant of $150,000. Most board members had no problem with this additional grant, but John objected. He argued that the Met had already received its full capital grant from the RBF and was not entitled to any further support. It was another case where John’s “holier than thou” attitude antagonized the rest of us. In the end the board approved the additional grant, with John petulantly abstaining from the vote.

  And there matters rested in mid-1978, with John and Nelson each eyeing and jibing at each other across the boardroom table and making RBF meetings an uncomfortable experience for the rest of us.

  SKIRMISH AT THE FAMILY OFFICE

  In the spring of 1977, Nelson completed his unsolicited study of the Family Office and submitted his recommendations to his three brothers. Up until then the Family Office, which Grandfather had established in the mid-1880s, had functioned on an informal basis. First Grandfather and then Father had hired a small number of professionals to help manage the family’s business and philanthropic interests. But after World War II, as my generation became more active, it became necessary to create departments to handle the family’s growing legal, real estate, accounting, investment, and philanthropic interests.

  Father generously continued to pay for most of these services, which amounted to millions of dollars annually, until his death in 1960. Thereafter his widow, Martha, who had inherited half of his estate, agreed to pay for half the office costs, with my generation picking up the rest of the tab. Martha died in 1971, after which the brothers, with assistance from Babs, shouldered the full burden of office expenses. From that point on, spiraling inflation and the increased demand for services by the cousins and their children drove costs to a higher level each year.

  Nelson’s study contained several constructive and valuable recommendations. He suggested a total reorganization of the office through the creation of a family-owned corporation that would charge clients for services rendered. Nelson took as his model the Bessemer Trust Company that the Phipps family had organized a number of years earlier, and proposed marketing its services to outside clients as well. This “Rockefeller Trust Company” would be governed by a board of directors and run by a chairman and chief executive officer. Nelson’s plan promised huge cuts in our costs by rationalizing office operations. It dealt with the difficult issue of family continuity and the transfer of power between the brothers and the cousins. In many respects Nelson’s proposal offered a plausible solution to the problems the family faced.

  But Nelson, inexplicably, misjudged the politics of selling his idea to the rest of the family. His troubles began when he brazenly proposed that he become chairman and CEO of the new corporation. That meant replacing Laurance, who had been the nonexecutive chairman of the office for almost twenty years, and J. Richardson Dilworth, who had been the able manager and, in effect, the CEO of the office during that same period. Nelson also proposed restricting membership on the new corporation’s board of directors to individuals with “proven capacity in the outside world.” According to Nelson’s criteria, only he, Laurance, and I, and John’s son, Jay, then governor of West Virginia, passed the test from within the family. Nelson insultingly dismissed John and all the other cousins, including his own children, as “unqualified.”

  This aspect of Nelson’s plan had all the characteristics of a power grab, and most family members reacted very negatively to it. The issue came to a head at the “cousins weekend” in June 1977 in Tarrytown, the annual gathering when many of the family return to Pocantico for fun, relaxation, and meetings on a variety of family-related issues.

  On Friday night Nelson attended a dinner at his son Rodman’s house along with a number of cousins and their spouses. This was the first time that Nelson had seen many of them since the Collier and Horowitz book had appeared the year before. Nelson first made clear his distaste for the book and his low opinion of the cousins who had cooperated with the authors. He then proceeded to explain his plan for the office with himself as chairman and CEO. The cousins were outraged. They attacked Nelson for the imperious manner in which he was trying to seize control of the office. Nelson responded in kind. It was a tense and unpleasant evening for everyone present.

  The following morning the four brothers gathered in the Card Room of the Playhouse while the cousins convened outside by the swimming pool to discuss formally Nelson’s proposal. Because office management had never been determined by voting, Nelson assumed his plan would go into effect once his brothers approved it. He was dumbfounded when we were sent word that the cousins had voted unanimously to turn it down. They insisted Laurance should remain as head of the office while other aspects of the plan were considered. Nelson was as angry as I have ever seen him, and he demanded that his three brothers support the implementation of his entire plan immediately.

  I must say I favored Nelson’s becoming head of the office, but not with the absolute authority he demanded. I also felt empathy for him because of his genuinely hurt feelings and the hostility he had encountered. But he seemed oblivious to how much he had provoked the cousins. Despite his demands for personal support, I thought the time had come for diplomacy in order to end the confrontation. For the next hour or so I acted as a conciliator, first with Nelson and then with the cousins. After Nelson calmed down a bit, I left my brothers and walked down to the pool. I urged the cousins not to reject Nelson’s proposal out of hand. It took a good deal of persuasion, but eventually they softened their position, but not by much. They continued to insist that Nelson’s reorganization plan be shelved. They did agree to his becoming chairman but not the CEO, and only on the condition that the office would be run along more democratic lines, with their needs receiving greater recognition. When I returned to the Card Room, John, Laurance, and I prevailed upon Nelson to agree to this compromise, but his anger at the family continued to simmer for months.

  Two decades later, as I think back on that sunny Saturday at Pocantico, I realize that family dynamics began to change irrevocably on that day. Nelson, the architect and advocate of family unity who for so long had been accepted as the family’s undisputed leader, had suffered a devastating defeat. His rejection forced him to draw back from the family and its principal institutions. At the same time, and quite unexpectedly, as a result of my stepping up to help craft a compromise between the cousins and the brothers, my role as a family leader began to become more prominent.

  SHOWDOWN OVER POCANTICO

  At the same time that we battled over the RBF and the Family Office, my brothers and I also faced difficult decisions about Pocantico, the family estate in Westchester County. This issue generated yet another bitter quarrel between John and Nelson.

  By the early 1950s we came to realize not only that the estate was a very valuable economic asset, but also that it had genuine historical and aesthetic attributes. We began to explore our options—a process that was not fully resolved until the late 1970s with the deaths of John and Nelson. Our
early deliberations were made more difficult by the intricate ownership structure of the property.

  Pocantico, like the Gaul of Caesar’s Commentaries, was divided into three parts. First, there was the Kykuit mansion and the area immediately surrounding it, which we referred to as “the Park” or the “historic area”; it consisted of about 250 acres. From the mid-1950s on, John, Nelson, Laurance, and I owned this portion of Pocantico as tenants in common. Second was the “open space,” almost 2,000 acres in extent, owned by all five brothers through Hills Realty. There were our individually owned properties: John’s Fieldwood Farm; Nelson’s Hunting Lodge; my Hudson Pines Farm; and Laurance’s five distinct parcels, including Rockwood Hall, on the Hudson River.

  Beginning in the early 1960s we began to develop plans for the future disposition of these properties, especially the open space. None of these plans met our needs, so in 1972 we asked the noted landscape architect Hideo Sasaki to address all of the concerns that had emerged over a decade’s worth of discussions and prepare a plan that would yield the “highest and best use” for the entire Pocantico estate.

  A MONUMENT TO NELSON

  Nelson had never been particularly concerned about what happened to our jointly owned property “outside the fence.” When it came to planning for the future of the estate, Nelson tended to think primarily, if not exclusively, about Kykuit. He viewed the mansion as the family’s ancestral home and the symbolic center of the Rockefeller universe. He considered it of great importance that he was its occupant in lineal succession to Grandfather and Father. So great was Nelson’s sense of ownership that few of his guests were aware that he was not the actual owner of Kykuit but rather a joint tenant of the property along with three of his brothers. It was Nelson who pushed for its designation as a National Historic Landmark, a distinction bestowed by President Ford in an impressive ceremony in December 1976.

  Here again John differed strongly with Nelson. The historic preservation of Kykuit, which in his view would simply be creating a “monument to Nelson,” was not high on his list of priorities. His prime concern was to ensure that the open spaces in the other reaches of the estate ultimately would be devoted to public purposes.

  In this instance Laurance agreed with John, but his loyalty to Nelson made it difficult for him to resist his brother’s plans. Laurance’s deepest personal commitment was to conservation, and he was averse to applying his personal financial resources to other aspects of planning for the future of the Pocantico estate. He was strongly drawn to the idea of creating a public park out of the open space as a legacy to both his own life’s work and to Father’s. I would later discover that as far as Kykuit was concerned, Laurance would not even have been sorry to see it torn down.

  My own view was that we should try to safeguard the open space and preserve Kykuit because I believed there were compelling arguments for both.

  The plan that Sasaki submitted in 1974 skillfully balanced our different preferences and provided the framework for resolving our competing objectives. Sasaki told us that the “highest and best use” for the property was to keep Pocantico exactly “as it is.” He argued that Kykuit and the park area should be preserved for its historical, architectural, and aesthetic significance, and that most of the open space should be preserved for “park purposes” for the benefit of the general public. The plan was diplomatically presented, and the family’s reaction was positive, even enthusiastic.

  There remained two overarching questions: To what private entities would the property be given, and how would it be financed? Even if we donated most of the open space to a governmental entity as parkland, the cost could be considerable, especially if the agency selected required an endowment to maintain Father’s original carriage roads as well as the fields and forests. Preserving Kykuit would be an even more expensive proposition; indeed, the estimate of the endowment needed just for the historic area was $35 million.

  Although some of this amount could be raised by selling marginal areas of the open space, most of the endowment would have to come from our own resources. Nelson proposed that the RBF supplement the funds that each of the brothers would commit. Once again John strenuously resisted, arguing that a grant from the RBF would be “inherently self-serving.” This particular issue would become the final battleground between John and Nelson.

  AN OUT-OF-CHARACTER LETTER

  Shortly after the cousins’ revolt at the Playhouse in June 1977, John wrote Nelson a letter, which he had hand-delivered from his office in the northwest corner of the fifty-sixth floor to Nelson’s office in the northeast corner. It read in part: “You have always indicated to me that there were two things you wanted to accomplish in your lifetime. The first was to become President of the United States, and the second was to become the leader of the family and be sure it lived up to the great traditions bequeathed to us by Father and Grandfather. Obviously, you have failed in the first of these objectives, and you are in danger of failing in the second, unless you modify your behavior.”

  Nelson wrote back immediately, demanding that John’s letter be “withdrawn.” It was a private letter, of course; no one else had seen it. But Nelson was adamant. He said that unless John withdrew the letter immediately, he would break off negotiations on Pocantico and pursue plans to build a hotel and conference center on his own portion of the property. Eventually John did take the letter back, and negotiations resumed.

  Once again I found myself in the middle of a John-Nelson contretemps. They both had legitimate points but had lost sight of the common good. After much bargaining we reached a compromise: Nelson agreed to the donation of a large portion of the open space as parkland, on condition that each of us insert language in his will committing $5 million for the endowment of the historic area and that our $20 million be supplemented by a $15 million grant from the RBF, thereby ensuring an adequate endowment to fund the historic preservation aspects of the Pocantico plan. John went along with the agreement, and the prospects for a permanent—and amicable—solution seemed bright.

  But matters were not quite settled. After years of battling with Nelson, John decided he could be just as contrary and irascible as Nelson in trying to get what he wanted. Before changing his will, John insisted that Laurance include Rockwood Hall—the beautiful property along the Hudson River—in the park. While the future disposition of any part of our separately owned property had never been part of the negotiations, John arbitrarily decided that Rockwood Hall had to be included, or he would call off the deal.

  Laurance resented John’s unilateral reopening of the negotiations with new conditions. He found this end run intolerable and refused to consider the proposal. John persisted, but the more he lectured Laurance about his “duty,” the madder Laurance got. Finally, John came to me and suggested that he and I approach Laurance and offer to buy Rockwood Hall ourselves as a means of including it in the proposed park. It was with great reluctance that I agreed to join him, and we got the reaction I feared. Laurance was furious, wouldn’t discuss the matter, and essentially pushed us out the door.

  After that incident John finally accepted the fact that Laurance wasn’t going to budge, and he agreed to modify his will, as the others of us already had, to include $5 million for the Kykuit endowment. Being a stickler for detail, however, he methodically reviewed draft after draft, suggesting minor changes and raising marginal issues for reconsideration by his lawyer. We all assumed that John’s revisions were completed and that the Pocantico issue had finally been put to rest. No doubt this would have been the case if tragedy had not intervened.

  THE DEATH OF JOHN

  I last saw John on July 9, 1978. He and Blanchette came to Hudson Pines for Sunday lunch with Peggy and me. We had a relaxed meal on the dining terrace in the shade of a big elm tree. Peggy told John of her new interest in raising purebred Simmenthal cattle. As with everything else she undertook, Peggy had become passionately involved with farming, and after lunch she persuaded John to go for a carriage drive to see some of
her prize animals. I stayed back at the house with Blanchette to discuss Museum of Modern Art matters.

  John was impressed by what he saw, and the following afternoon, after spending the day working on his will with his secretary, he took her to see the cattle on his way to the railway station to catch a train back to New York. His secretary was driving because John was still recovering from ankle replacement surgery.

  As they proceeded along Bedford Road, a Volkswagen driven by a young man, who had just left his house upset over an argument with his parents, was approaching from the other direction. Rounding a bend in the road, he lost control of the car, careened off a tree, and slammed directly into John’s approaching vehicle. John’s secretary was severely injured; her recovery would be long and painful. The young boy died at the scene of the accident. John was killed instantly.

  When I learned the news, I thought not of our annoying disputes but of all the little kindnesses he’d shown me when we were younger, things that he had probably forgotten but that had meant so much to me. Even though John was almost ten years my senior, he had made the greatest effort of all my brothers to reach out to me. We were not really close, but his comforting support when I needed it led me to ask him to be the best man at my wedding.

  As with Father, life had been difficult for John, but he left behind a legacy of accomplishment in the field of philanthropy of which even a Rockefeller could be proud. Like all of us, John had imperfections, but he was a decent, honorable, and compassionate man who cared deeply about the world, hated injustice, and devoted his time, talent, and resources unstintingly to those causes that held the greatest promise for producing real and lasting change. His courageous campaign to reduce the alarming rate of world population growth, his generous support of the arts, and his visionary efforts to link the peoples and nations of the Far East more closely to the United States have had a lasting impact. I regret that the full measure of John’s accomplishments have never been adequately understood or recognized.