Former West Virginia governor and five-term U.S. Senator John “Jay” Rockefeller IV died at the age of 89.
His family said he died at his home in Washington, D.C., on Friday but did not provide a cause, The Washington Post reported.
He was the great-grandson of industrialist John D. Rockefeller, owner of Standard Oil Trust, which monopolized the oil industry in the early 20th century. He was one of the world’s richest people.
The senator came from a long line of powerful businessmen who carried on the Rockefeller legacy. His father, John D. Rockefeller III, was a philanthropist. His uncle Nelson Rockefeller was governor of New York, elected four times, and eventually appointed vice president of the U.S. Uncle Winthrop Rockefeller was governor of Arkansas and uncle David Rockefeller Sr. was chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Bank, the Post explained.
The newspaper called Rockefeller IV an “unlikely public face of West Virginia” after growing up a “blue-blooded Northeasterner.”
He was born in Manhattan in 1977 and was one of four children, but the only son. His birth certificate left off his middle name, Davison, and the IV designator
“As a boy,” he told Life, “I was told that I should make up my own mind whether I wanted to carry on the full name, which I think stands for public service, a sense of responsibility, and a high standard of demand on oneself. When I was 21, I wrote a letter to my father saying I wanted the name and the responsibility.”
He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy boarding school in 1954 and majored in Far Eastern languages and history at Harvard.
He taught English at International Christian University in Tokyo and lived with Japanese students in a wood and paper shack in a rice field, the Post reported.
Rockefeller earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1961 and joined the Peace Corps as a special assistant to its founder, R. Sargent Shriver. He also worked for the State Department’s East Asian division.
He arrived in West Virginia at 27 as a community organizer with Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), a program set up by President Lyndon Johnson that had volunteers take an oath of poverty and live with families in poor communities. Rockefeller was sent to Emmons, West Virginia, where he worked on youth and health care projects, starting the community’s first Little League team and a mobile screening service for women, the Post said. He served with VISTA from 1964 to 1966, Reuters said.
He stayed after his mission ended and worked his way up in politics, not as a Republican like the rest of his family, but as a Democrat.
Rockefeller was elected to the state legislature in 1066 and then West Virginia’s secretary of state in 1968, Reuters reported.
He was elected governor in 1976 after his failed gubernatorial campaign in 1972. He then used his own money to pay for his campaign and ran for U.S. Senate in 1984.
He served in the Senate as the junior senator from West Virginia and alongside senior senator Robert Byrd. Rockefeller IV made a name for himself by diving into committee work and advocating for the vulnerable, the Post reported.
He worked to expand eligibility for the earned income tax credit and to start the child tax credit and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provided health coverage for children of low-income families. He also strove to protect Medicare.
Rockefeller pushed for more research and treatment of illness related to military service, protections for coal miners’ health benefits after mines closed, and updated mine-safety regulations.
One of his last legislative pursuits was sponsoring the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 to set security standards and protect computer networks.
“Championing those most in need has been my life’s calling and I will never stop fighting to make a difference for the people who mean so much to me,” he said when he would not go for a sixth term in the Senate in 2013, Reuters reported. He was 75 at the time.
Rockefeller was married to public television executive Sharon Percy Rockefeller. They had four children.
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