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In the summer of 1953, national headlines reported that 41-year-old Winthrop Rockefeller — the fourth son of one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential families, and a prominent figure in high society — had abruptly left New York City and moved to the top of a mountain in the heart of Arkansas.
Early Life
Really, the only surprising part of the move was where he ended up. It was actually the third time Winthrop Rockefeller had stepped away from the path his family, and even the country, had envisioned for him: a refined life in New York and a leadership role within one of the family’s powerful enterprises.
First, he walked away from Yale in his junior year to work as a roughneck in the gritty, dangerous Texas oilfields of the 1930s, earning just 75 cents an hour and renting a room for $4.50 a week. Later, after finally taking a role in one of the family’s companies in 1937, he stepped away again in 1941 to enlist in the Army as a private. He completed Officer Candidate School and served as an infantry commander in the Pacific during World War II, where he earned a Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Clusters and a Purple Heart for his bravery aboard a troopship attacked by a kamikaze pilot during the invasion of Okinawa.
By 1953, when Rockefeller traveled to Arkansas at the invitation of an old Army friend, a recurring theme in his life had become hard to miss: he wanted to be where the action was. He preferred doing the tough, hands-on work — drilling wells instead of running the oil company, fighting on the front lines rather than simply financing the war effort.
Becoming an Arkansan
The 927-acre stretch he purchased atop Petit Jean Mountain gave him just the kind of challenge he seemed to thrive on. Rockefeller wasted no time transforming the rugged land into a model cattle farm, pumping water 850 feet up from the Arkansas River, building lakes, roads, and even an airstrip, and tirelessly constructing and reconstructing one structure after another.
But Rockefeller quickly realized that the need for change reached far beyond the boundaries of his mountain property. At the time, Arkansas was stuck in what Time magazine described as a “dead-end economic and political condition.” Jobs were scarce, wages were low, schools were struggling, and access to basic health and dental care was limited. A one-party political system, weighed down by ongoing corruption, only made matters worse.
In Arkansas, Rockefeller finally found what he had been searching for all his life: a challenge worth taking on. He poured himself into the work of improving the state’s quality of life with unwavering purpose, spending not only vast amounts of energy but also vast amounts of his personal fortune. “Win found himself in Arkansas,” his brother Nelson, then governor of New York, later said. His brother David, president of Chase Manhattan, added, “It was just what he wanted and needed.”
With the freedom and resources to live anywhere in the world and do anything he pleased — including enjoying a life of comfort and privilege — Rockefeller instead chose to plant roots in Arkansas, a state that then had perhaps the lowest standard of living in the country. He committed himself fully to the mission of helping make it a better place.
A Two-Party System
Those efforts started in earnest in 1955, when Gov. Orval Faubus appointed Rockefeller head of the newly established Arkansas Industrial Development Commission. During his nine years as chair of the AIDC, some 600 new industries came to Arkansas, providing 90,000 jobs and paying an annual $270 million.
Of course, Rockefeller also injected a great deal of his own capital into the state’s economy, staying true to a family tradition of sweeping philanthropy. He financed a model school in Morrilton at the foot of Petit Jean, led efforts to create the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, paid for new health clinics in rural areas, and supported the state’s universities, ultimately giving well in excess of $10 million.
But his work to reform the state’s de facto one-party political system would prove to have broader impact in the end than either his philanthropy or his work with the AIDC. Rockefeller, according to a 1966 Time article, “served as financier, architect and mason of a two-party system more promising than any in the South,” succeeding “almost singlehanded in renovating [Arkansas’] political structure.”
Despite this campaign to bring the stereotypical smoke-filled rooms where much of Arkansas politics took place out into the daylight, Rockefeller had never had political ambitions of his own. But by 1964 it had become clear to him that if he was going to effect the kind of change he believed Arkansans wanted and needed, he would have to run for governor. That year, he was defeated by Faubus but won 44 percent of the vote, twice as many as any Republican candidate since Reconstruction.
Our 37th Governor
Two years later, against Jim Johnson, Rockefeller won, carrying 54 percent of the vote and some 80 percent of the Black vote. The state’s House of Representatives was still made up of 97 Democrats and three Republicans, and all 35 state senators were Democrats. But Rockefeller’s governorship was still a turning point of historical proportions.
Pragmatic and egalitarian, Rockefeller rejected the segregationist fervor of the era (his opponent had openly refused to shake hands with Black voters) and instead focused on education, economic progress, infrastructure and government reform. That the state of Arkansas sided with him and against a damaging but deeply entrenched status quo changed the tenor of politics across the nation.
Rockefeller served two consecutive two-year terms as governor, pursuing his agenda of reform and progress. Throughout that time, he continued to operate his farm, which by the time of his first election in 1966 comprised not just the Petit Jean property but some 34,000 acres and 6,000 head of cattle spread across three states. He also continued to conduct business — farming, philanthropy and governing — from his beloved mountaintop estate.
The Legacy of a Catalyst
The impact of Winthrop Rockefeller’s life can easily be seen in Arkansas. Various institutions bear his name and/or were spawned by his philanthropy and vision. After Rockefeller’s death in 1973, his only son, Winthrop P. Rockefeller, carried forward the governor’s ideals. The younger Win Rockefeller served as the state’s lieutenant governor from 1996 until his untimely death in 2006, showing throughout his time in office the same resolve and commitment to a better Arkansas that defined his father’s legacy.
That legacy of leadership was marked most notably by Winthrop Rockefeller’s understanding of the importance of collaboration, his ready acceptance that the problems facing the state he had grown to love could never come from him alone. Famously, during the 20 years he lived on Petit Jean, he convened more than 200 formal and informal discussions among business, political and thought leaders to hammer out solutions to a huge variety of issues.
And that — bringing the right people together in the right ways in order for them to see what needed to be done and do it themselves — was what Rockefeller wanted most to be remembered for. Despite his philanthropy, his business enterprises, his political accomplishments, he was most proud of what he inspired others to do. Upon leaving office, he said he hoped his legacy would be that of “a catalyst who hopefully served to excite in the hearts and minds of our people a desire to shape our own destiny.”
Today, the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute strives to perpetuate that legacy by continuing the tradition of convening great thinkers and leaders here at Rockefeller’s historic estate to work collaboratively on solutions to issues and problems facing Arkansas, our country and our world.