Eileen Rockefeller’s favorite photograph shows a beautiful little girl with light curls in her father’s arms. In the background, there are flowers, suggesting they are in nature, and the light indicates a beautiful day—one of those childhood moments that become deeply ingrained in memory. Only later do I notice that the photograph is incomplete, cropped from a larger picture that originally included her mother, Margaret, standing beside her father.
When I ask her why she prefers the cropped version over the original, she tells me: “My mother was like the sun—smiling and cheerful. But then, her dark moments would follow. She would become distant and angry. I am quite certain that my mother’s depression amplified the sense of inferiority that haunted me throughout my life, as well as my siblings.”
Her father, David, on the other hand, was a man of a cheerful disposition. Although largely absent during her childhood, she always felt a special warmth and friendship between them that lasted until his final days. After our conversation, Eileen had a scheduled lunch with her father. Even in his advanced age, their lunch dates whenever she visited New York were an unspoken rule. “Dad always takes me to a lovely place. He dresses up for the occasion and orders fine wines. Despite his age, he remains a gentleman. It seems people don’t change,” she tells me.
All of this would be an ordinary family scene—if it were not for the fact that they bear the most famous surname of all: Rockefeller. When I tell Eileen, heir to the Rockefeller dynasty, that her last name in our language is synonymous with wealth, she laughs. “It’s not easy to feel important when your family sets the bar so high,” she says. It was a bright day, and the office window beside her opened up to a view of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), One Chase Manhattan Plaza, Lincoln Center, and the Freedom Tower—the new incarnation of the former World Trade Center. These are all buildings tied to her family’s achievements.
That morning, we spent time in a lounge on the top floor of the Rockefeller Center, the masterpiece of her grandfather, where the family offices remain today. Once a year, the close family members who, like Eileen, manage the Rockefeller Foundation—custodian of the family legacy—gather in this very room, whose walls are adorned with works by French Impressionists and offer a view of Manhattan. This week, however, Eileen called an extraordinary family meeting to share the sad news that her father, David, had passed away at the age of 101. Despite his advanced age, the news was met with disbelief. The world’s oldest billionaire had remained healthy and active until his final day. Just last June, shortly after his 101st birthday, he had been seen in good spirits at a MoMA garden party alongside his daughter-in-law Susan and granddaughter Ariane. When David Rockefeller passed away in his sleep on Monday, the world lost not only the last member of his generation of Rockefellers but also the last representative of an era that shaped New York’s social life.
David Rockefeller was the son of John Davison Rockefeller and grandson of John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil conglomerate and originator of the family fortune—estimated to have amassed $340 billion during his lifetime. David was one of the five Rockefeller brothers, simply known as “The Brothers,” who held legendary status in New York’s life. Two of them were politicians—Nelson served as the Governor of New York State and briefly as Vice President of the United States, while Winthrop was the Governor of Arkansas. John D. III, the founder of Lincoln Center, and Laurance were esteemed philanthropists who shied away from the public eye. Laurance was a passionate environmental advocate who advised U.S. presidents. Among them, David was the one who most significantly carried forward his grandfather’s legacy.
Publicly known as the “banker of all bankers,” Wall Street remembers him as the head of banking giant Chase, which he led for 35 years. However, David Rockefeller was, above all, an ambassador of capitalism, which he viewed as the system that had brought the greatest good in human history. Throughout his life, he never hesitated to promote capitalism, particularly when it involved opening new markets for American products. Thanks to him, Chase was the first American bank to establish branches in the USSR and China. Over his long life, he met more than 200 world leaders in over 100 countries, including Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro. “Because I started earlier, I believe I have probably met more heads of state than anyone else, including Henry Kissinger,” he once said in an interview, adding, “I find it very important to gain a comprehensive perspective, not just the opinions of businesspeople.”
Though he never publicly discussed his wealth, Forbes magazine estimated his personal fortune at $3 billion. Like his mother, he was a great art enthusiast. His private art collection was valued at half a billion dollars. He was also a significant philanthropist—during the 1970s, he saved MoMA from financial ruin with a generous $100 million donation. He gave an equivalent amount to Harvard University, where he had earned his Ph.D., and to Rockefeller University’s medical school, which his grandfather had founded. “No individual has contributed more to the commercial and social life of New York than David Rockefeller,” said Michael Bloomberg, former mayor of New York and founder of Bloomberg LP. Alongside his brother Nelson, David played a crucial role in the development of the World Trade Center and revitalization of Wall Street in the 1960s and 1970s. “Our goal was to revive the southern part of Manhattan and create demand for office space in that area, just as our father had done with Rockefeller Center during the Great Depression,” he said. During the construction of the WTC, the media often referred to the two towers as “David and Nelson.”
Yet, to Eileen Rockefeller, he was simply “Dad.” “Some of my fondest childhood memories are of weekends at our countryside retreat. Animals and nature were part of our weekends, and that included insects. Many people don’t know that one of my dad’s favorite hobbies was collecting insects. When I was little, his attention was mostly on work, so I used our weekends at our country estate in Tarrytown as an opportunity to help him find insects,” she recalls.
David Rockefeller had an extensive insect collection in the estate’s basement. He would preserve the specimens in alcohol, label them with their species and the date he found them, and carefully arrange them in his display cases. “At times, it seemed to me that Dad was as proud of his insect collection as he was of his six children,” Eileen laughs. “For him, the number of species he had collected over the years was important. For me, it was simply about our time together.”
His passion for insects reflected his penchant for categorization. Eileen says her father documented every meal and wine he had in his favorite restaurants, along with anecdotes and impressions from his countless travels. “My father recorded every meeting in his life. Many thought he had an extraordinary memory, but they didn’t know that he would write down details about the person he met, the location, and the topic of conversation. I inherited his enormous Rolodex with over 150,000 contacts. I believe it is the best address book in the world.”
Eileen Rockefeller, now 65, lives with her husband and sons on the family farm in Vermont, surrounded by nature and far from the world of luxury. She gained international attention in 2013 when she published her autobiography, *Being a Rockefeller*. These unexpectedly candid memoirs revealed the darker side of growing up in the shadow of a powerful dynasty. “I want to be remembered for my kind heart,” she says.