Jay Rockefeller’s Lesson for Today’s Billionaire Heirs

We are living in a time when billionaires are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to dabble in politics. Mostly, they seem to throw money at losing candidates. If only more of them would take an example from John D. Rockefeller IV. 

John, better known as Jay, was often referred to as the “renegade Rockefeller.” He was famous for breaking with family tradition and becoming a Democrat, but when the former West Virginia Governor died at 89 on Friday, he left behind a legacy of philanthropy and compassion that went beyond politics.

Rockefeller was born in 1937 to one of America’s wealthiest families. His great-Grandfather, John D. Rockefeller, was the founder of Standard Oil and the world’s first billionaire. John was also a philanthropist who gave away $540 million in his lifetime (the modern equivalent of about $12.5 billion). While a stunning contribution, it didn’t quite leave the family penniless. At the time of his death, Jay was estimated to have a net worth of around $160 million dollars. 

You might expect a man born with such a silver spoon in his mouth to spend his life yachting, traveling and eating mountains of caviar. In Jay’s case, that assumption could not have been more inaccurate. 

He had a privileged upbringing in Manhattan and later at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Afterward, he attended Harvard and studied Japanese, hoping he might one day be an ambassador to Asia. But he felt that he couldn’t truly understand the culture without immersing himself in it, so he went to live in Japan for three years. There, he resided with a middle-class family and spent about $50 a week. Later, he returned to America and graduated from Harvard in 1961 with a degree in Far Eastern studies. He went on to Yale, where he studied Asian history.

But he would find his true purpose much closer to home. In 1964, he joined Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) to serve in West Virginia. He recalled that he did so at a time “when Eisenhower called the Peace Corps the kiddy corps.”

He worked in Emmons, a poverty-stricken town inhabited largely by coal miners. During his time there, 78 percent of families received government aid. Many might have been initially put off by the 6’6 Rockefeller heir tooling around town in his red Mustang. Rockefeller later recalled, “It took me six months to convince them I wasn’t trying to sell them encyclopedias.”

Once the townspeople came to know him, though, they loved him. One retired miner recalled, “You can’t help liking him. He’s like a big Shepard dog. He makes friends with everybody.” 

Jay never pretended not to be a Rockefeller. Indeed, he would often note that he was a rare member of his family who didn’t feel particularly self-conscious about his background. The San Francisco Chronicle noted that, “He is so comfortable with himself that when he goes into the mines, he wears a three-piece suit.”

While in Emmons, he started the town’s first Little League team, established a community association, a meeting hall and a school bus service, and began construction of a library. However, he realized that there was only so much he could do on the ground. “I realized in Emmons that one guy working in a hollow won’t solve any social problems,” he said, “there are a thousand hollows, and the only way you can help the people in them is from the top.”

In 1966, he won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. He was then elected Secretary of State of West Virginia in 1968 and lived in a home approximately 15 miles from Emmons. While it was reported to be a fine house, it was “by no means a Rockefeller mansion.” (This, at least, would eventually change—he would go on to reside on a gorgeous 3,000-acre estate in Pocahontas County in West Virginia.) 

By 1977, he became the governor of West Virginia. He had an extraordinarily high approval rating of 69 percent. In 1985, he became a senator and would represent West Virginia for the next 30 years. He focused most intently on healthcare and, in 1997, co-authored and championed the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which still provides low-cost health insurance to families. It currently covers 7.2 million children.   

He also created the Rockefeller Coal Act (officially, the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992), which provided lifetime benefits for retired coal miners. If he had one true enemy, it was Donald Blankenship, who oversaw the mines where safety violations led to 29 workers dying in an explosion in 2010. When he was indicted, Rockefeller remarked,  “he will be treated far fairer and with more dignity than he ever treated the miners he employed.”

The lessons he learned in Appalachia would forever remain with him during his time in politics. In 2009, when championing the Affordable Care Act alongside Barack Obama, he noted, “That’s the VISTA volunteer in me. My passion has not diminished one bit since 1964.”

Modern billionaires sometimes claim that ordinary people simply don’t like the ultra-wealthy out of petty jealousy. Jay Rockefeller seems like proof that people like the very wealthy just fine, so long as the very wealthy also appear to like them. And, as one friend from West Virginia mentioned, Jay Rockefeller “cared for everyone he ever met.”