David Rockefeller, the U.S. banker, philanthropist, presidential adviser and heir to one of history’s most fabled fortunes, has died. At 101, he was the world’s oldest billionaire.
He died Monday at his home in Pocantico Hills, New York, according to an emailed statement from Fraser P. Seitel, a family spokesman. The cause was congestive heart failure.
Rockefeller was the youngest and last-surviving grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, the nation’s first billionaire. He was the only one of John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s five sons who spent his entire professional career in the corporate world, rising to chief executive officer of Chase Manhattan Bank during his 35 years at the company.
He was also a confidant of world leaders, from Deng Xiaoping in China to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, from the shah of Iran to Henry Kissinger. Rockefeller famously asked President Jimmy Carter to let the deposed shah come to the U.S. for medical treatment, leading to the seizure of American hostages in Tehran from 1979 to 1981.
Rockefeller was equally well known for his philanthropy. In 2006, he bequeathed $225 million to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which he and his brothers established in 1940 to promote social change worldwide. The year before, he donated $100 million each to two New York institutions: the Museum of Modern Art, which was co-founded by his mother, and Rockefeller University, a medical-research school started by his grandfather.
In 2008 he gave $100 million to his alma mater, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“The range of David Rockefeller’s business and philanthropic and political connections is perhaps unequaled,” said Ron Chernow, the author of “Titan,” a 1998 biography of John D. Rockefeller.
David Rockefeller’s death closes a chapter in the family’s storied history. Known simply as “The Brothers,” David, Laurance, John, Nelson and Winthrop traversed the intersecting worlds of business, politics, philanthropy and the arts as no other U.S. family had ever done.
The Brothers
Laurance, who died in 2004, was a venture capitalist, environmentalist and adviser to five U.S. presidents on conservation. Nelson, who died in 1979, was the four-term New York governor and U.S. vice president under President Gerald Ford. John D. Rockefeller III, the oldest brother who was killed in a 1978 automobile accident, led the fundraising effort to develop New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Winthrop, who died in 1973, was the former governor of Arkansas.