John Davidson “Jay” Rockefeller, the former Governor of West Virginia, and later five-term senator for the state, passed away at his home in Washington D.C at age 89.
Family representative Shelley Rodgers confirmed his death. No cause of death was given at the time.
A scion of the Rockefeller family, and the rare Democrat among them, Senator Rockefeller was born was born to a life of immense wealth and privilege in New York in 1937, the second child of John D. Rockefeller III and Blanchette Ferry Rockefeller. He attended Harvard College, before pulling out after his junior year to spend three years in Tokyo. He returned, and graduated in 1961, before beginning his career in public service. Under then-president John F. Kennedy, he worked for the Peace Corps in D.C, and then continued his service in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.
He then returned to the U.S. to work under President Johnson, with the Volunteers in Service to America, which took him to Emmons, West Virginia from 1964-65. There, he was an emphatic community organizer, working with mining families. Initially, they were weary, but he was eventually adopted by the town. In 1966, he was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates. After turning down his uncle, Nelson’s offer to take Robert F. Kennedy’s New York senatorial seat following Kennedy’s assassination in 1968, he built a career in West Virginia politics. He was elected as the state’s governor 1976, and re-elected for a second term four years later.
In office as governor in 1970.
In 1984, he moved to Washington D.C. as the senator from West Virginia. He was re-elected for four more times, retiring from public service in 2015. During his career in the capital, he had three separate tenures as chair of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee between 1993 and 2003. Later, he was chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation from 2009 – 2015.
Campaigning for health care reform with then-First Lady Hilary Clinton in 1993.
He was known for his particularly close relationship with then-president Bill Clinton and First Lady Hilary Clinton, working with them on healthcare reform. Though the Clinton-led healthcare reform ultimately failed due to lobbying by the health industry, he was still in office to vote for Obamacare in 2010.
Campaigning for then-Senator Barack Obama in West Virginia in October 2008.
He is survived by his wife, Sharon Lee Percy Rockefeller, the former chief executive of WETA-TV, the Washington local PBS station, as well as their four children: John D. Rockefeller V, Valerie Rockefeller, Charles Rockefeller, and Justin Rockefeller, and nine grandchildren. He is also survived by two sisters: two sisters, Hope Aldrich and Alida Messinger.
Dorothy Scarborough (she/her) is the assistant to the Editor in Chief of Town & Country and Elle Decor.
Source: www.townandcountrymag.com
