January 31, 1979
Page 1469
THE DEATH OF NELSON A. ROCKEFELLER
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I want to say a few words today about my friend Nelson A. Rockefeller. Nelson Rockefeller and I shared as many common experiences as we had differences. We were both in the State of Maine. We both were elected Governor. And we both aspired to the Presidency of the United States.
Nelson was born of great wealth. It bought him time. He devoted that time to the public service. He was, as much as any man I know, absolutely dedicated to the public service. He genuinely cared about the quality of our Government, the services Government provides and the opportunities available to the American people.
I knew Nelson best in the years in which we served together on the National Commission on Water Quality. That service began when he was Governor of New York and ended during his Vice Presidency. We disagreed from time to time but never with each other's motivation. Nelson brought the same enthusiasm and ardor to the efforts of that Commission as he did to everything else. He expected that the sheer force of his effort and his personality would shape the outcome of the Commission, and to a large extent, it did.
He brought that same degree of commitment to the State of New York and to his national political effort. Nelson Rockefeller was a progressive in a Party which vigorously promotes the status quo. As such, he was denied the chance to serve his country from the position in which he would have felt most effective.
As a Democrat I took some comfort, at the time, in the fact that he was denied the opportunity to create what surely would have been another great American political dynasty. As a friend and an admirer I feel a sense of sadness that this man did not have his chance at the helm.
Mr. President, I ask that two articles by the Associated Press in Maine, and an editorial in the Portland Press Herald of Tuesday, January 30, 1979, be printed in the RECORD.
The material follows:
ROCKEFELLER LOSS AFFECTS MAINE TOWN
(By John Halvorsen)
SEAL HARBOR.— The death of Nelson Rockefeller was felt especially keenly in this tiny community on Mt. Desert Island where he was born, later built a magnificent home and returned each summer.
Three generations of Rockefellers have had ties to Maine, and the year-round residents of the area, many of them employees or former employees of the family, knew Nelson Rockefeller as a friendly, open man.
He was "an awful nice fella — everybody spoke well of him. He should have been president," said Harry Fernald, 77, who retired as Rockefeller's gardener seven years ago.
"Wonderful. The whole family was wonderful," said Robert F. DeRevere, 89, who worked for the Rockefeller family for 56 years, both at Tarrytown, N.Y., and Seal Harbor.
DeRevere's son, Robert E. DeRevere, who runs a garage in Seal Harbor, said townsfolk "regard the whole Rockefeller family as being a pretty model family . . . They did supply a good amount of work here on the island, kept the economy well-bolstered here for years."
Rockefeller's death "is going to be a real blow to this town,"said Christia L. Skillin, who runs the only restaurant, which Rockefeller often visited in the last 20 years.
"He was a very nice man. We thought very much of him," Mrs. Skillin added. "He didn't make you feel as if he thought he was any better than you were."
His father, John D., Jr., had built a 99-room house long before, "The Eyrie," but it was torn down in the 1960s. The elder Rockefeller also donated 7,000 acres of land to create nearby Acadia National Park.
When Rockefeller built his own house. known as "The Anchorage," he is said to have stood on a point and told the architect, "I want this view and this one and this one."
The 21-room stone and glass house, viewed as ultramodern at the time, includes a double level living room, a banquet sized dining room, a balcony jutted out over the ocean, and a master bedroom with a ship ladder down to the heated ocean water swimming pool.
Besides sailing and relaxing at his summer home, Rockefeller used it to host several fundraising events for the Maine GOP. In 1967 he put his private art collection, housed in a converted coal wharf at Seal Harbor, on public display for the first time.
He was vacationing here in August 1974 when he learned President Gerald R. Ford wanted him to be vice president.
Last spring, Rockefeller put the house up for sale. It was offered through Sotheby Parke Bernet Galleries of New York for "around $1 million." But several local residents said they heard it had later been taken off the market.
Rockefeller's brother David, president of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and other relatives still have houses here.
Some of those who knew Rockefeller best still guard his privacy in death as they did when he was alive. One caretaker at his estate declined comment, and a man at the Seal Harbor General Store, who talked with Rockefeller "for sure last August," offered an explanation:
"Seal Harbor's a very private residential community, and we guard each other's privacy very jealously."
But others were less reticent. Nelson Leland, a retired school guidance counselor who is five years younger than Rockefeller, recalled playing with him on the town beach as youngsters. "You always felt special to be with a millionaire."
Leland's mother, now 86, was executive housekeeper for John D. Jr., "and when he died, she stayed there with Nelson and Happy." And when she retired, the Rockefeller family "gave her a new car and a year's salary. Anybody who worked for the Rockefellers got a fine pension."
Leland recalls that Rockefeller "donated generously to the hospital fund, the library fund — anything that came up, he was right there."
Rockefeller's fellow politicians remembered him, too. To former Maine Republican chairman John R. Linnell of Auburn, Rockefeller was "a very vibrant person to be around. He was full of enthusiasm" and "he could transmit his enthusiasm to other people."
Robert A. G. Monks of Cape Elizabeth, also a former state GOP chairman, was struck by
Rockefeller's "sheer energy and gusto. Just extraordinary.
"I couldn't believe it when I read in the paper (of his death)," Monks added. "It's almost as if, with Rocky's energy, if he were going to die, he'd decide when and let us all know . . . He seemed to have a capacity to create his own reality."
Monks praised Rockefeller as a man "who was very committed to trying to make things work in America."
Gov. Joseph E. Brennan said Rockefeller "will be remembered for, his, "life long commitment to strengthening America's stature in the world community, a goal he pursued as both a public servant and a private citizen.
"He was a man of great wealth and privilege who chose to offer himself for public service when he could have followed more comfortable and less frustrating pursuits. He'll be remembered as a statesman and a patron of the arts. We of his native state join the rest of the nation in mourning his loss."
[From the Portland Press Herald, Jan. 30, 1979]
DEATH OF A MAINER
There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that they tell about one of the Rockefeller brothers, perhaps Nelson, growing up on Mount Desert.
A local companion asked the youngster why he didn't have an automobile, and the Rockefeller boy replied indignantly, "Who doyou think we are, Vanderbilts?"
Throughout his life Nelson Rockefeller wore his immense wealth easily and unostentatiously. It is not stretching matters greatly to suggest that those boyhood summers on Mount Desert may have nurtured and matured this special aspect of his character.
He was an engaging combination of the practical and the poetic, as evidenced by the twin passions of his life — politics and art collecting. His taste in both ran to the progressive, which served him well in the art world but frequently caused him grief in the political.
Three times he sought the presidency but each time he was denied the Republican nomination by the more conservative elements in his party. No one knows how well he would have done as president, but he would have brought to that office outstanding qualities of energy, imagination and leadership.
He was always graceful in victory and — like his nickname and his native state — rocklike in defeat.
We tend naturally to view momentous events in a parochial context, so while the rest of the world this week remembers Nelson Rockefeller as a New Yorker and a man of fabulous wealth, we prefer to recall him as a native Mainer and an admirable neighbor.
Rich as they come, of course, but no damn Vanderbilt.