Family TifaesJcljr December 6, 1961
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FLORA
X VUVjlVUJLUllUi. U 1 1 I 1 SCHREIBER
First, there If was Mother,
loving andpwise; then
Tod, his witty, strong
Y9 minded first wife;
and nowPp
Happy,
there's
the vivacious
young woman who could
cost him the Presidency
or help him capture it
egating suits for use only at dances and at the
Sunday school class he taught. Even today he
prefers informality to formality and is chronical
ly in need of a haircut. Although President Ken
nedy and he at one time patronized the same
New York tailor, he doesn't care how he is
dressed and often wears rumpled double-breasted
suits that are unflattering to his stocky figure.
Nelson ran for president of his class but was
defeated. He did win the vice presidency, how
ever, and he also earned Phi Beta Kappa honors.
"Nelson insists," a classmate reports, "that he
made Phi Beta Kappa chiefly to compete with a
friend who had made it before him."
Abby Rockefeller stayed close to her son dur
ing these days. With her husband, she continued
to impose the economic rigors in which they so
earnestly believed. So at Dartmouth, the wealth
iest student on the campus received an allowance
of $1,500 a year that had to cover everything
board, room, tuition, books, clothes, and travel.
Ten percent had to be set aside, for church and
charity contributions, and his parents also ex
pected him to save an additional 10 percent.
When his allowance was spent, moreover, it was
not replenished. Many of his classmates had cars,
but Nelson could afford only a bicycle. Some
times he had to work in the school cafeteria to
raise money to take a girl out.
One campus story is that a professor who met
Nelson on the street and extended an invitation
to come to dinner 'sometime,' received in reply
a swift "How about tonight?" Reason: Nelson
had only 12 cents in his pocket at the time.
After Tod returned from the Sorbonne, Nel
son invited her to a Dartmouth dance. "We had
a good time," he wrote his mother. "She is always
full of good fun and never dull." Meantime,
Abby was cultivating Tod on her own. She invited
the Clark girl to an Easter-vacation party and
also included her in a trip to Cairo.
' Nelson made his mother his confidante. In one
letter he described Tod as "good sport, good
mind, witty." On his 21st birthday he wrote:
"I'm beginning to think that I really am in love
with Tod, whatever being in love means. I can
shake it off for a while now and then, but it
always comes back, and I've never been able to
develop a real affection and an admiration that
is as all-inclusive for anyone else. She is the only
girl that I know who measures up anywhere near
ly to the standards set by you, Mum. But don't
get worried. I'm not going to run into anything
in a headstrong way."
A week after Nelson was graduated from Dart
mouth in 1930, he married Tod at Bala-Cynwyd
on Philadelphia's Main Line. He had known her
since ha was 16. He was now 22.
A childhood friend of Tod's says, "Nelson
was drawn to Tod because she was no conven
tional product of an exclusive girls' finishing
school . . . Among other things, she is a col
lector of rare plants, an amateur ornithologist
who maintains bird-watching stations on two
continents, and she has made an outstanding
contribution to the education of nurses. She has
an independent mind and strong convictions."
A Public Carr Begins
Tod was prepared for a wholly nonpublic life
befitting her own inclinations. But, in 1940, Nel
son accepted a $l-a-year post from President
Roosevelt and made his bow in Washington.
Later he became Undersecretary in the new De
partment of Health, Education, and Welfare,
which, along with Milton S. Eisenhower and
Arthur S. Fleming, he had proposed.
In 1954 President Eisenhower appointed Rock
efeller as Special Assistant to the President for
Foreign Affairs. But, though he was close to
power, he had none. Stirred by the possibilities
of high office, he began to dream.
Tod would have been happier in New York or
at the Rockefeller's Pocantico Hills estate, but
she stoically accepted the role in which she had
been cast. Their private life during the Washing
ton years was serene. A neighbor of the Rocke
fellers reminisces: "We always thought Nelson
and Tod were very close. She was attractive,
strong, bright. But she was the Btronger of the
two. Maybe it was that which led to the later
estrangement between them. Talk was that they
were divorced because Tod hated the governor's
mansion and wanted privacy. But we knew that
by the time they were divorced, they already had
been estranged some nine years."
Through the years in Washington and after
his return to New York in 1956, Rockefeller
treated his children Rodman (born in 1932),
Ann (in 1934), Steven (in 1936), and the twins,
Michael and Mary (in 1938) very much as his
own father had treated him. He could be Btern
about money. Once, while he was conversing with
a friend, one of his sons approached him. "Dad,"
the boy Baid, "I've just got $5 left. If I just had
$5 more, I could go to the dance."
After a pause, Rockefeller replied, "Gee, that's
too bad." Then he resumed his conversation.
He instilled self-reliance and independence in
his children. And when his teaching bore fruit,
he was very pleased. He used to be proud when
Michael talked of finding a career in which he
' could serve people, just as he was proud when
Ann married an Episcopal minister, Robert L.
Pierson, who chose a needy Bronx congregation
instead of a fashionable Park Avenue one. There
was satisfaction, too, when his son Steven then
(Continued on page 4)
Family Wttfcly. DtctmbtT I. 19U i