Laurance Rockefeller

Laurance Spelman Rockefeller
Laurance and Mary Rockefeller (1965)
Born	(1910-05-26)May 26, 1910 New York City, United States
Died	July 11, 2004(2004-07-11) (aged 94)
Occupation(s)	Financier, philanthropist
Spouse	Mary French
Children	Laura Marion Lucy Larry

Laurance Spelman Rockefeller (May 26, 1910 – July 11, 2004) was a venture capitalist, financier, philanthropist, a major conservationist and a prominent third-generation member of the Rockefeller family. He was the fourth child of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and brother to John D. III, Nelson, Winthrop and David.

Early life and marriage

Rockefeller was born in New York City. He graduated from Princeton University (1932) and attended Harvard Law School for two years, until he decided he did not want to be a lawyer.

In 1934, Laurance married childhood friend Mary French, whose mother, Mary Montague French, and Laurance's mother were friends. When Nelson attended Dartmouth College, he shared a room with Mary's brother. Mary was granddaughter of Frederick H. Billings, a president of Northern Pacific Railway.

Laurance and Mary had three daughters and a son. They are Laura R. Chasin, Marion R. Weber, Dr. Lucy R. Waletzky, and Larry Rockefeller. In 2004, when he died, he had eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren. Mary had died in 1997.

Business, Philanthropy, Interests

In 1937 he inherited his grandfather's seat on the New York Stock Exchange. He served as founding trustee of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for forty-two years, from its inception in 1940 to 1982; during this time he also served as president (1958–1968) and later its chairman (1968–1980) for twenty-two years, longer than any other leader in the Fund's history. He was also a founding trustee of the Rockefeller Family Fund from 1967 to 1977.

He was a leading figure in the pioneering field of venture capital, which began as a joint partnership with all five brothers and their only sister, Babs, in 1946. In 1969 this became the successful Venrock Associates, which provided important early funding for Intel and Apple Computer, amongst many other start-up technology companies, including many other firms involved in healthcare. Over the years his investment interests ranged also into the fields of aerospace, electronics, high temperature physics, composite materials, optics, lasers, data processing, thermionics, instrumentation and nuclear power.

Venrock was a limited partnership investment company financed by members of the Rockefeller family and a number of the institutions with which the family had longstanding philanthropic ties, among them the Museum of Modern Art, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

Rockefeller's major interest was in aviation; after the War, he became friendly with Captain Rickenbacker, who had triumphed in many dogfights over Europe. Rockefeller had learned to fly, and found Rickenbacker's vivid accounts of an approaching boom in commercial air travel to be persuasive. Within a decade after Rockefeller's considerable investment, Eastern Airlines had become the most profitable airline to emerge after World War II. He became its largest shareholder. He also funded the pivotal post-WWII military contractor McDonnell Aircraft Corp.

Rockefeller was a longtime friend and associate of DeWitt Wallace, who with his wife in 1922 co-founded Reader's Digest. Wallace, who was a major funder of the family's Colonial Williamsburg, appointed Laurance as an outside director in the company. He wanted to ensure that it preserved its patriotic mission of informing and educating the public, along with support for national parks, one of Rockefeller's primary interests.

Through his resort management company, Rockresorts, Inc., Rockefeller opened environmentally focused hotels at Caneel Bay on Saint John, United States Virgin Islands (1956) (a favorite resort today for celebrities), some property of which was later turned over to the Virgin Islands National Park; in Puerto Rico, the British Virgin Islands, and Hawaii, contributing to the movement now known as eco-tourism. The last of these, the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, was established in 1965 on the Kohala Coast of the island of Hawaii.

Rockefeller funded the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center at a critical juncture of its early development. He also funded William Irwin Thompson's Lindisfarne Association, a think tank and retreat. He had a major involvement in the New York Zoological Society, along with support from other family members and philanthropies; he was a long-time trustee (1935–1986), president (1969–1971) and chairman (1971–1985).

Controversial Science

Rockefeller also became interested in spiritual research and crop circles. He funded a study about crop circles in the late 1990s. {{citation}}: Empty citation (help) Rockefeller also funded controversial, though peer reviewed and not-disproven, research of the PEAR lab - dealing with consciousness-based physical phenomena.

UFO

In later life, Rockefeller became interested in UFOs. In 1993, along with his niece, Anne Bartley, the stepdaughter of Winthrop Rockefeller and the then-president of the Rockefeller Family Fund, he established the UFO Disclosure Initiative to the Clinton White House. They asked for all UFO information held by the government, including from the CIA and the US Air Force, to be declassified and released to the public. The first and most important test case where declassification had to apply, according to Rockefeller, was the Roswell UFO incident. In September 1994, the Air Force categorically denied the incident was UFO-related. Rockefeller briefed Clinton on the results of his initiative in 1995. Clinton did produce an Executive Order in late 1994 to declassify numerous documents in the National Archives, but this did not specifically refer to UFO-related files.

He also had an interest, gained via his mother Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, in Buddhism and Asian cultural affairs. He funded the research of Harvard Medical School Professor Dr. John Edward Mack, author of Passport to the Cosmos.

Conservation

He was noted for his involvement in conservation (Lady Bird Johnson in 1967 was to label him "America's leading conservationist") and the protection of wildlife and was chairman of the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission. He served on dozens of federal, state and local commissions and advised every president since Dwight D. Eisenhower on issues involving recreation, wilderness preservation and ecology. He founded the American Conservation Association and supported many other environmental groups.

He funded the expansion of Grand Teton National Park and was instrumental in establishing and enlarging national parks in Wyoming, California, the Virgin Islands, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii. In his home state, New York, he expended further cash and influence to help establish parklands and urban open spaces. There, as an active member of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, he helped create a chain of parks that blocked the advance of urban sprawl.

In September 1991, he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for contributions to conservation and historic preservation. Awarded by President George H. W. Bush, it was the first time in the Medal's history (since 1777) that it had been awarded for outdoor issues, effectively naming Rockefeller as "Mr Conservation", who more than any other American had put this issue on the public agenda. Rockefeller said at the award presentation that nothing was more important to him than "the creation of a conservation ethic in America".

In 1992 Rockefeller and his wife Mary donated their Woodstock, Vermont summer home and farm to the National Park Service, creating a national park dedicated to the history of conservation, now called the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park. In 2001, Rockefeller transferred ownership of his landmark 1106-acre (4.5 km²) JY Ranch to the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. It was accepted by Vice-President Dick Cheney on behalf of the Federal government (see External Links below).

He died in his sleep of pulmonary fibrosis on July 11, 2004.

Conservation affiliations

Partial list of his more notable memberships:

• American Conservation Association, Inc. - Founder, President and Trustee.
• American Museum of Natural History - Life Member.
• The Conservation Foundation - Founding Member and Trustee, Board of Directors.
• Environmental Defense Fund - Member.
• Greenacre Foundation - Trustee.
• Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc. - President.
• National Audubon Society - Life Member (Recipient, Audubon Medal, 1964).
• National Geographic Society - Board of Trustees.
• National Park Foundation - Vice Chairman, Board Member Emeritus.
• National Trust for Historic Preservation - Life Member.
• National Wildlife Federation - Member.
• The Nature Conservancy - Member.
• New York Zoological Society - Trustee, Chairman.
• Palisades Interstate Park Commission - President.
• Save-the-Redwoods League - Life Member.
• The Wildlife Conservation Society - Chairman.
• World Wildlife Fund - Member.

(Source: Robin Winks, Laurance S. Rockefeller, Appendix, pp. 207–211)

Further reading

• Laurance S. Rockefeller: Catalyst for Conservation, by Robin W. Winks, Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1997.
• Memoirs, David Rockefeller, New York: Random House, 2002.
• From the Captain to the Colonel: An Informal History of Eastern Airlines, Robert J. Serling, New York: Dial Press, 1980.

See also

• Rockefeller family
• David Rockefeller
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund
• Venture capital
• Private equity
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

External links

• Dick Cheney's remarks in 2001 on the transfer by Laurance of his JY Ranch to the Federal Government
• Personality Change/The Father of Venture Capital A 2000 Forbes Magazine (Subscription) profile of the Venrock venture capital firm.
• RBF 2003 Annual Report: Philanthropy for an Interdependent World (pdf)
• Laurance S. Rockefeller, Passionate Conservationist and Investor, is Dead at 94 2004 New York Times obituary.
• Laurance Rockefeller Dies at 94 2004 Washington Post obituary.
• Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park
• Rockefeller UFO Disclosure Initiative to the Clinton White House
• The Rockefeller Archive Center Biographical details from the family archives.