EPUB paragraph 3 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
One day at Ormond Beach, Inglis happened to mention to Rockefeller how much Ida Tarbell’s account supported his own version of events, and it prompted this melancholic remark: “I wish you would tell that to my son.… I must say that I have never had time to become really acquainted with my son. He has been very busy always.” When Inglis transmitted this to Junior, Junior was touched but blamed his father for their constrained relationship. “There is no subject that I have not always been happy to discuss with Father,” he explained to Inglis, “but as you yourself have observed, he is inclined less and less to discuss subjects which he does not himself initiate; hence our serious interchange of view is perhaps more limited than might otherwise be the case.” Rockefeller could not suppress his controlling nature even with the son he so dearly loved.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Ida M. Tarbell · William O. Inglis · Ormond Beach
EPUB paragraph 4 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
The tension latent in their relationship flared up when Junior displayed a serious interest in art. Enough of a Calvinist to consider artworks idolatrous, Rockefeller saw collecting as both wasteful and egotistical. Despite Abby’s prodding, Junior could not stop feeling guilty about his new hobby. “When I first began buying art objects,” he conceded, “I had a feeling that perhaps it was a little selfish. I was buying for myself instead of giving to public need.” Then he grew enthralled by the exquisite Chinese porcelains owned by J. P. Morgan that were being exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. For Junior, they represented an ideal art form, for they were expertly crafted and devoid of any subversive themes or sensuality. After Morgan died in 1913, Joseph Duveen, the art dealer, bought the collection, put it up for sale, and offered Junior the first pick of any pieces. Junior coveted so many pieces that the total cost to buy them would have exceeded one million dollars. Like a trembling, sweaty schoolboy, he wrote to his father in January 1915 and asked to borrow the money. He tried to show that he had proceeded in the most painstaking Rockefeller style. “I have made many visits to the Museum and have studied carefully the most important pieces. I have also sought expert advice regarding them. Such an opportunity to secure the finest examples of Chinese porcelains can never occur again, and I want to avail myself of it.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · J. P. Morgan · Joseph Duveen · Metropolitan Museum of Art · Museum
EPUB paragraph 5 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Instead of honoring or even gratifying this unusual request, Rockefeller played the proud philistine and turned it down cold. But Junior was now past forty and would not simply let the matter drop, as he would have in the past. In an anguished letter, he vented his frustrations:
EPUB paragraph 6 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
I have never squandered money on horses, yachts, automobiles or other foolish extravagances. A fondness for these porcelains is my only hobby—the only thing on which I have cared to spend money. I have found their study a great recreation and diversion, and I have become very fond of them. This hobby, while a costly one, is quiet and unostentatious and not sensational.
Names:
EPUB paragraph 7 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Faced with this unprecedented revolt against his judgment, Rockefeller not only had the good sense to relent but gave his son the money outright. Deeply touched, Junior responded with profuse, breast-beating gratitude. “I am fully conscious of the fact that I am in no sense worthy of such munificence on your part,” he wrote his father. “Nothing that I have ever done or could do will make me worthy.” When Junior received the porcelains at West Fifty-fourth Street, he sat down on the floor and rolled them about, fondly studying them and searching for cracks or marks of repair. Had Junior not established at this point his right to collect art, free of parental interference, he might never have been emboldened to create The Cloisters or Colonial Williamsburg. To demonstrate that his new interest was not frivolous, Junior developed great expertise on Chinese porcelains and put together one of the outstanding collections in private hands.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Williamsburg · The Cloisters · West Fifty-fourth Street
EPUB paragraph 8 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
The friction over the Chinese porcelains highlighted Rockefeller’s pressing need to make some final disposition of his fortune. Even though Junior had a net worth of about $20 million in early 1917, it was not generating much income. He had received large blocks of stock in American Linseed and Colorado Fuel and Iron, but the latter paid little or nothing in dividends and had only ensnared him in controversy. He also owned real estate in Cleveland and New York plus railroad and gas bonds. Junior’s combined salary and allowance provided him with several hundred thousand dollars a year—which was a fantastic sum for any ordinary mortal but small beer for the son of the world’s richest man.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Colorado Fuel and Iron · Cleveland · New York · American Linseed
EPUB paragraph 9 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
It was likely the Ludlow Massacre that convinced Rockefeller that his son had the fortitude to manage the family affairs. “There was reason for Grandfather to feel uncertain in terms of how much Father could handle until Ludlow came along,” David Rockefeller later observed. “I think it was a searing but very much of a learning experience for him as well as one that toughened him.” Rockefeller’s decision to transfer the money was probably clinched in 1916 and 1917 when the federal government twice boosted inheritance taxes. Characteristically, Rockefeller had waited a long time to decide to transfer his money to his son, but once he began to strip himself of wealth, he acted with electrifying speed, as if pleased by this act of renunciation. On March 13, 1917, he gave his son 20,000 shares of Standard Oil of Indiana, inaugurating the biggest intrafamily transfer of money in history. On July 10, 1918, he gave 166,072 shares of Standard Oil of California; two weeks later came large blocks of stock in Atlantic Refining and Vacuum Oil. On February 6, 1919, Junior received 50,000 shares of Standard Oil of New Jersey, followed by another 50,000 shares on November 20. In 1920, Rockefeller bequeathed thick heaps of New York City and Liberty Bonds. These transfers occurred without poetry or preamble, accompanied only by terse, businesslike notes. For example, on February 17, 1920, Rockefeller wrote: “Dear Son: I am this day giving you $65,000,000 par value of United States Government First Liberty Loan 3½% bonds. Affectionately, Father.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · David Rockefeller · Standard Oil · Standard Oil of New Jersey · Standard Oil of Indiana · New York City · Ludlow · California · Vacuum · Ludlow Massacre · Atlantic Refining · United States Government First Liberty Loan
EPUB paragraph 10 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
In possession of these miraculous gifts, Junior was left staggered, dazed, speechless. Before 1917, Rockefeller had given $275 million to charity and $35 million to his children. (In November 1917, he estimated that if he had kept and invested all his money until that time, he would have been worth $3 billion, or well in excess of $30 billion today. That would have put Rockefeller second only to William Henry Gates III, with $40 billion, among the billionaires listed by Forbes magazine in its 1997 ranking of the richest Americans.) Between 1917 and 1922, he gave away another $200 million to charity and $475 million to his children, with almost all of the latter going to Junior. A profound dichotomy now opened in the Rockefeller family between the dutiful son and the wayward daughters and sons-in-law—a dichotomy so deep that the world would think of Junior’s descendants alone as the real Rockefellers. (Of course, they also had the Rockefeller name.) By keeping the fortune in one compact mass, Rockefeller enabled his son to magnify its impact. The poor little rich boy was now the planet’s foremost heir. Within the space of five years, Junior’s net worth soared from $20 million to about $500 million—more than the $447 million that his father had given to the Rockefeller Institute, the General Education Board, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial combined—and equivalent to $4.4 billion today. Thus, for all their public-spirited generosity, the Rockefellers still retained control over a great deal of the fortune, though much of it would be distributed to deserving parties over time. After disbursing so much, Rockefeller left himself with pocket change—somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty to twenty-five million dollars—for playing the stock market.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Frederick T. Gates · Rockefeller Foundation · Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research · General Education Board · Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial · Rockefeller family · B. C. Forbes · Henry · Uncle William
EPUB paragraph 11 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
In 1917, Rockefeller formed special trusts at the Equitable Trust for Alta and Edith, depositing twelve million dollars apiece in their accounts ($140 million apiece today) and terminating their allowances. This money, if more than enough to make them comfortable for life, seemed a bagatelle beside Junior’s cache. In defending this blatant imbalance, Junior later argued that his father had favored him because he could “carry on his philanthropic and charitable work in the same spirit which had activated him, and … anything he gave me would be administered with the same sense of duty and stewardship which impelled his giving.” In a way that would have been impossible for Alta and Edith, Junior adopted his father’s principles and functioned as his surrogate. Rockefeller told his son, “What a providence that your life should have been spared to take up the responsibilities as I lay them down!” Rockefeller was increasingly buoyed by the admiration of this son who viewed him as a heroic figure in business and philanthropy. As he told Inglis, “I really think I could not have had so good and true a son as he is if I had been half so bad as the prejudiced and interested ‘historian’ [Tarbell] would seek to make me out.” For Rockefeller, only a good tree brought forth good fruit, and Junior’s virtue was therefore incontrovertible proof of his own.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Alta Rockefeller Prentice · Edith Rockefeller McCormick · Ida M. Tarbell · William O. Inglis · Equitable Trust
EPUB paragraph 12 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
By the time that Junior inherited his golden treasury, he and Abby had brought forth a large, energetic family of six children, having added Laurance (1910), Winthrop (1912), and David (1915). After Laurance’s birth, Junior and Abby decided that 13 West Fifty-fourth Street could not accommodate this growing tribe, and in 1911 they bought the property at 10 West Fifty-fourth Street. Having finished with Kykuit, William Welles Bosworth—the landscape architect whom John senior found so infuriatingly extravagant—constructed a nine-story mansion for the younger Rockefellers that resembled a miniature city. Lavishly appointed with a rooftop squash court and playground, an art gallery, a music room, two drawing rooms, and an infirmary, it was one of New York’s largest private residences. The family occupied the new domicile beginning in September 1913.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Winthrop Rockefeller · David Rockefeller · William Welles Bosworth · Rockefeller family · New York · Kykuit · West Fifty-fourth Street · John
EPUB paragraph 13 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
To escape the sultry Manhattan summers, Junior and Abby began to spend summers on Mount Desert Island in Maine in 1908. A favorite getaway of the rich since the 1880s, it was now colonized by several Rockefeller intimates, including Charles Eliot, Simon Flexner, and Christian Herter. John and Abby were so enchanted by the island’s rocky, rugged beauty that in 1910 they bought a hilltop house called the Eyrie in Seal Harbor on the quieter southern side of the island. Set on a granite bluff overlooking the harbor, the Eyrie was a heavily gabled, Tudor-style cottage in the same sense that Newport mansions were cottages—that is, it was a colossal affair. Starting with the original 65 rooms, Junior expanded the place to palatial scope until it contained 107 rooms, 44 fireplaces, 22 bathrooms, and 2,280 windows.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Simon Flexner · Charles Eliot · Manhattan · Christian Herter · Seal Harbor · Newport · Maine · Mount Desert Island · Eyrie · Tudor · John
EPUB paragraph 14 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
When Junior and Abby first visited Mount Desert Island, it was a pristine place that still banned autos, and they could explore any number of wild, unspoiled places on foot or horseback. Junior took special delight in constructing carriage roads on his property. During these Maine summers, he developed a special feeling for wilderness, which inspired in him feelings of religious awe and perhaps memories of the lakes and ravines of his Forest Hill boyhood. For a man sorely taxed by responsibility, these solitary haunts refreshed an overburdened mind.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Forest Hill · Maine · Mount Desert Island
EPUB paragraph 15 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
In 1916, President Wilson created the Sieur de Monts National Monument on the island, which became Lafayette National Park in 1919—the first national park created in the East—and then was renamed Acadia National Park in 1929. To serve the cause of conservation, Junior not only donated thousands of wilderness acres to the park but personally charted fifty-seven miles of auto-free carriage roads (engineers calculated the grades), studded with charming stone bridges and gatehouses that blended seamlessly into the scenery. From his father, he had learned the art of opening vistas and making the roads as unobtrusive as possible. While some environmental purists faulted Junior for tampering with nature, he had a democratic vision of how the parks might be of use to ordinary people. Whereas he often seemed wearily dutiful at philanthropic board meetings, he showed an undisguised zest for scenic preservation. It was an early sign of what became a continuing interest: preserving ancient beauty from the encroachments of modern life. At the same time, he tried, whenever possible, to retreat from the chaos of modern urban life into the peace and dignity of an uncorrupted rural past.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Woodrow Wilson · Acadia National Park · East · Lafayette National Park
EPUB paragraph 16 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, unlike her husband, was attuned to the modern, the daring, and the spontaneous. “Mother would love to have an idea and say, ‘Let’s go do it,’ ” said her son David. “She enjoyed the unexpected very much.” She could be satirical or flippant and admired the saucy young flappers of the 1920s. “I love to see the old hypocrisies being shattered,” she said. Never fearful or inhibited, she was pleased by impulsive behavior and once said of her grandchildren, “I love even their naughtiness, their funny wants and their plots to get them, which I can see lurking in their minds.” Such an attitude perplexed Junior, who was irritated by the high jinks of small children.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · David Rockefeller
EPUB paragraph 17 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Though she adhered to her father’s economic conservatism, Abby helped to broaden the political spectrum for the Rockefeller family. She was a liberal Republican who supported Planned Parenthood, the United Jewish Appeal, and the League of Nations. After the Ludlow Massacre, to improve labor relations, she contributed up to a third of the annual budget of the National Women’s Trade Union League. In the 1920s, she also teamed up with Standard Oil of New Jersey to create a community center, the Bayway Community Cottage, for refinery workers in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and frequently stopped by its baby clinic. After one trip, she told her daughter Babs, “I held twenty-five naked, squirming babies today in our new baby clinic at Bayway, some of them took the occasion to drench me thoroughly. Most of them were fat, rosy, and cheerful, but once in a while they all began to howl at once. I had a wonderful time.” She was the major benefactor of the Grace Dodge Hotel in Washington, D.C., a 350-room hotel for professional women operated by the YWCA and staffed entirely by women, down to the bellhops and elevator operators.
Names: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Abby Rockefeller Mauzé · Standard Oil of New Jersey · Rockefeller family · New Jersey · Washington · Ludlow Massacre · League of Nations · Queen Elizabeth · Planned Parenthood · National Women’s Trade Union League · Bayway Community Cottage · Bayway · Grace Dodge Hotel · YWCA
EPUB paragraph 18 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Abby was vocal in her passion for social justice, and this had a lasting influence on her descendants. While staying with Senior at Ormond Beach in 1923, she wrote a letter to her three oldest sons that throbbed with outrage at discrimination. “It is to the everlasting disgrace of the United States that horrible lynchings and brutal race riots frequently occur in our midst. The social ostracism of the Jews is less barbaric, but … causes cruel injustice.… I long to have our family stand firmly for what is best and highest in life.” Though Junior subscribed to many of Abby’s views, he was guided more by abstract codes of conduct than visceral sympathy with the oppressed.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Ormond Beach · United States
EPUB paragraph 19 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Abby made sure that her children did not flaunt their wealth, and she turned down one son who wanted extra travel money in college by telling him, “The boys who cannot afford to go away will feel restless and envious.” Constantly vigilant against the disfiguring effects of wealth, she lectured Laurance when he was only thirteen on the perils of having too much money: “It makes life too easy; people become self-indulgent and selfish and cruel.” Abby once told Nelson, “I am sure that too much money makes people stupid, dull, unseeing and uninteresting. Be careful.” During World War I, Abby directed five hundred workers of the Red Cross auxiliary that operated out of 4 West Fifty-fourth Street, which Senior had obligingly vacated to aid the war effort. She stationed her white-uniformed children in the basement to roll bandages and had them tend victory gardens at Pocantico.
Names: Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Nelson Rockefeller · Laurance Rockefeller · Pocantico Hills · World · West Fifty-fourth Street · Red Cross
EPUB paragraph 20 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
In running their various households, Abby often chafed at Junior’s niggardly style but submitted for the sake of marital harmony. She waited until the January white sales to buy new linen, and when the children went off to school, she had to telephone them clandestinely from the bathroom, since her husband considered these calls superfluous luxuries. One son observed pointedly, “His calls were business and therefore justifiable, hers were personal, and possibly frivolous.”
EPUB paragraph 21 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
If John junior and Abby had a marriage of passionate intensity, it was because his buttoned-down life required one great release. He beamed in her presence, could not take his eyes off her. “I never knew a man more completely attached to the woman he married,” said Tom Pyle, the game warden at Pocantico. “When they were grandparents, in the latter quarter of their lives, he still treated her with the adoration and devotion of a young lover.” Many people found something unhealthy about his constant need for her, which one daughter-in-law later said “seemed almost primitive and uncontrollable.” Even when traveling, Junior hovered over her with a proprietary air, refusing to share her company with others. Once when they were away, Abby wrote to a son, “Your father is afraid that I shall become intimate with too many people and will want to talk to them, so generally we eat in what I call the old people’s dining room where he feels I am safer.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Pocantico Hills · Tom Pyle · John
EPUB paragraph 22 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Even at home, Junior tried to monopolize Abby, and he cast a jealous eye on his six children as potential competitors for her time. Always warm and natural with the children, Abby did not abandon their upbringing to servants and governesses. She played cards with them, read to them, took afternoon tea with them, and tucked them into bed at night. A convivial lady married to a professional homebody, she followed the example of countless other women in her position and tried to shape her sons into model husbands, devoid of the faults of her own husband. Junior, perhaps subconsciously, saw her attention to the children as time stolen from him, and this could make him seem to be a grouchy, schoolmasterish father. “We grew up realizing that we had to compete with Father for her time and attention,” his son David said. “He expected her to be available when he needed her and his needs seemed insatiable.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · David Rockefeller
EPUB paragraph 23 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Whatever its drawbacks, it was generally a happy marriage. While they would have bruising quarrels over modern art, they were devoted to each other and shared many pleasures, including theater, concerts, and film as well as walking, riding, and driving. After evenings out, they loved to return home and sip hot chocolate in the intimacy of Junior’s dressing room. During these cozy moments before bed, they practiced the latest dance steps learned from their Arthur Murray teachers, read aloud from a Victorian novel, or sat back and listened to music on the Victrola. Whatever her frustrations with her husband, Abby thought him a man of sterling probity whom she respected as well as loved. As she once wrote, “I feel sorry for all the women in the world who haven’t as good husbands as I have.” And for Junior, Abby added many brilliant colors to the palette of what might otherwise have been a monochromatic life.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Victrola · Arthur Murray
EPUB paragraph 24 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
For the six Rockefeller children, their grandfather was a boon companion whom they remembered in various guises: as a wit, a clown, an ace raconteur, a frisky codger on the golf course, a cracker-barrel philosopher. Already in his eighties when some of them entered their teens, he seemed a spry fellow who joined readily in their games, whether playing hide-and-seek in the shrubbery or bounding across the room in blindman’s buff. He was probably no less colorful a specimen for his descendants than Devil Bill had been to his grandchildren. Like his siblings, John III remembered grandfather’s playfulness: “A very wonderful person with a sense of humor; he loved to tell jokes, starting out with something serious. He was warm, friendly, and accessible, and he never preached.”
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · William Avery Rockefeller · John D. Rockefeller III
EPUB paragraph 25 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Junior taught his children to venerate their grandfather, and as they grew up they were slightly astounded to discover that this jolly old eccentric had pulled off one of the biggest feats in business history. From an early age, they were aware that unusual controversy attached to the family name, since reporters and photographers were constantly caught vaulting the Pocantico fences. On May Day 1919, during a reign of anarchist terror, Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Jr., and other prominent Americans were sent letter bombs that were intercepted by the post office, yet no special guards were posted at Kykuit. “We always had to live with the fear that something would happen to the children,” Junior said, and he adopted a policy of never permitting them to have their pictures taken by strangers, lest it give ideas to terrorists or criminals. He kept them out of the papers so assiduously that they remained faceless to the general public until they entered college. Sometimes, after receiving menacing calls, the children were shadowed by guards.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · J. P. Morgan · Pocantico Hills · Kykuit
EPUB paragraph 26 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
On Sundays, the six grandchildren often strode from Abeyton Lodge over to Kykuit to dine with grandfather, the five boys wearing mandatory uniforms of stiff Eton collars, dark coats, and pin-striped pants. Like a pastor receiving his flock, Rockefeller greeted each grandson as “Brother.” Seated at the head of the table, he spouted tales from his past and mimicked people, gesturing with a spotless white napkin. The grandchildren whooped at his deadpan humor. The contrast between the lighthearted Senior, who seemed so relaxed, and his intense, edgy son probably did not help Junior with his children.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Kykuit · Abeyton Lodge · Eton
EPUB paragraph 27 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Yet Rockefeller’s insouciance also masked deeper concerns. Breakfasting with his grandchildren, he dispensed a nickel and a kiss to each, accompanied by a little pep talk. “Do you know,” he would ask, “what would hurt grandfather a great deal? To know that any of you boys should become wasteful, extravagant, careless with his money.… Be careful, boys, and then you’ll always be able to help unfortunate people. That is your duty, and you must never forget it.” The grandchildren credited their conceptions of philanthropic stewardship as much to their grandfather as to their father.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
EPUB paragraph 28 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Despite his rigidity, Senior had derived real pleasure from being a father, while Junior took it all too seriously. A number of factors made Junior an inflexible parent. The controversies around his father had molded him into a man of granite respectability who found it hard to lighten up with his own family. He was overly tense and disapproving when faced with unruly impulses in his offspring. Since they were to spend their lives in the public spotlight, he wanted his children to mirror his own starchy sense of rectitude. This mattered to him so desperately that he ruled his family with a quiet tyranny, inspiring more fear than affection. Sometimes, he lashed out unexpectedly, showing flashes of anger or ridicule that he screened from the world. He tried to imitate his father’s style as a parent, but he could not do it with John D.’s good humor. “I was always so afraid that money would spoil my children and I wanted them to know its value and not waste it or throw it away on things that weren’t worthwhile,” Junior said. “That was why I insisted that my children keep accounts just the way I did and I think the effect has been good.”
EPUB paragraph 29 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
On Saturday mornings, stomachs aflutter, the children filed one by one into Junior’s study and had their account books scrutinized. Although they received only a thirty-cent allowance—much less than their friends—they had to account for every penny. They were fined a nickel for omissions and awarded a nickel for scrupulous record keeping. They were expected to spend a third of their money, save a third, and donate a third to charity. Bound by these rules, the Rockefeller children acted like destitute waifs and constantly scrounged small change from friends. As Nelson lamented, “I can honestly say that none of us has ever had a feeling of actually being rich—that is, of having a lot of money.” Like Junior as a boy, they often dressed in old clothes and were denied ordinary trips to theaters or the movies until they were well into their teens.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Nelson Rockefeller
EPUB paragraph 30 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
In a repetition of his own upbringing, Junior gave the children opportunities to earn pocket change at Pocantico or Seal Harbor. They made money by killing flies (ten cents per hundred), buffing shoes, working in the garden, or trapping attic mice (five cents per mouse). The six children were taught to garden, sew, and cook—once a week, they had to prepare dinner together—and were encouraged to master hand tools. Each studied a different musical instrument, with one evening per week given over to hymn singing. Even family vacations became tutorials in personal responsibility, with one son assigned to buy railroad tickets, another to run errands, a third to handle the luggage, a fourth to book hotel rooms, a fifth to shine the shoes, and so on.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Pocantico Hills · Seal Harbor
EPUB paragraph 31 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Junior naively imagined that he had a fine, open relationship with his children, but they saw him as a forbidding figure, and Abby had to defuse tensions festering below the surface. She ended up serving as interpreter for them, saving the day with straight talk, common sense, and wisecracking humor. She also helped the children to please Junior in practical ways. When he wished them to memorize biblical verse, she printed out extracts on flash cards for them, and she also tidied up their account books before the weekly paternal audit.
EPUB paragraph 32 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c32_r1.htm
Junior wanted to saturate the children with sermons and religious tracts. Each morning at seven forty-five, even with guests present, the butler circulated a stack of Bibles on a silver tray. Junior read a portion of scripture and asked others to read aloud before they touched breakfast. Trying to keep alive the Sabbath tradition, he led his children, single file, on Sunday nature walks around Pocantico, lecturing them on trees and wildflowers and meting out fines for those who fell out of line. One Sunday in the 1920s, he deliberated long and hard about whether to allow his children to play tennis on the Sabbath. He consented only under pressure from Abby. The children were baptized, but they never turned into such regular churchgoers as their parents or grandparents, and the Baptist Church never formed the focal point of their lives.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Jr. · Abby Aldrich Rockefeller · Pocantico Hills · Baptist Church
EPUB paragraph 1 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c33_r1.htm
lessed with his father’s longevity, Rockefeller outlasted all his siblings. Though Frank was vice president of two Cleveland steel companies in his later years, he never got over his antipathy to John and raged against him till his dying day. In 1916, John gave a thousand dollars apiece to Frank’s three daughters and contemplated forming trust funds to provide each of them with a lifetime income. Nevertheless, even on his deathbed, following a stroke in early 1917, Frank still ranted against his oldest brother. “I was with him constantly and was there when he died,” said one of Frank’s friends. “You can understand the depth of his feeling when I say that his greatest fear during those last days was that John might try to come and see him.” After Frank died in April 1917, John and William attended the Cleveland funeral at Lake View Cemetery, where Frank was lowered into the plot he had chosen apart from the rest of the Rockefellers. Frank’s wife, Helen, and his three daughters had no plans to perpetuate his crazy vendetta and after the funeral cordially received John, who canceled his dead brother’s outstanding loans.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Frank Rockefeller · Rockefeller family · Cleveland · Lake View Cemetery · Helen · Uncle William · John
EPUB paragraph 2 · Text/Cher_9780307429773_epub_c33_r1.htm
In his last twenty years, Rockefeller felt the subterranean pull of tender boyhood memories. In June 1919, right before his eightieth birthday, he and William loaded up three Crane-Simplex touring cars and set out for the verdant Finger Lakes region of their boyhood. They returned to Richford, Moravia, and Owego and so cherished the memories that they reenacted the trip every year until William’s death in 1922. The Moravia house, with its splendid view of Owasco Lake, now lodged convicts from the Auburn prison who were working, by a bizarre coincidence, on the nearby Rockefeller Highway. On Rockefeller’s last visit, gazing at the old frame house, he doffed his cap, bowed his head, and declaimed with an actor’s panache, “Farewell old home!” Several days later came news reports that the house had burned to the ground, probably from a faulty chimney. Affected by the news, Rockefeller jotted down in a short-lived diary that he kept, “That was the scene of our first business venture, when we engaged in the raising of a flock of turkeys.” He had traveled so unimaginably far beyond his rustic boyhood world that his life seemed unreal to him at times.
Names: John D. Rockefeller, Sr. · Richford · Moravia · Owego · Owasco Lake · Auburn · Finger Lakes · Crane-Simplex · Rockefeller Highway · Uncle William
Source: Ron Chernow, Titan. Names and relationships retain the full atlas’s extraction limits. Map points are references; historical sites and regions can be approximate. Open the full interactive atlas.