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Philanthropy for the 21st Century

Philanthropy for the 21st Century
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November 5, 1989, Section 3, Page 4Buy Reprints
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The fourth-generation Rockefellers are confronted with their own mortality. As most of these heirs to one of the nation's wealthiest dynasties step deeper into middle age, they are searching for a meaningful way to leave their imprint.

In the last several years, some of the 22 fourth-generation members of the family, who range in age from 22 to 61 and call themselves ''the cousins,'' have started to take a more active role in the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the family's main vehicle for philanthropy. They have also moved to coordinate their own personal philanthropy and moved environmental causes to the top of their agenda.

''We decided the only way we could retain our identity as a family was through shared social purpose expressed through philanthropy,'' said Steven C. Rockefeller, one of the cousins.

The unrelated move by the Rockefeller Group last week to sell an interest in some of its choicest assets will ensure that future generations of the family have wealth if they choose to carry on the deep tradition of philanthropy established by their forebears. The sale of such showcase properties as Rockefeller Center and the Radio City Music Hall represents a forward-looking strategy. In diversifying the family's assets held in trust, which had become dominated by real estate, the Rockefeller trustees are ensuring that future Rockefellers will have resources in the 21st Century and beyond. On Monday, the company and David Rockefeller Sr., chairman of the Rockefeller Group, announced that it had sold a 51 percent stake in the company to Mitsubishi Estate Company of Tokyo.

While some of the younger Rockefeller cousins had been rumored to be interested in cashing out their interests in the company, Mr. Rockefeller insisted ''there are no payouts.'' The $846 million in proceeds from the sale revert to unbreakable family trusts established by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1934. The proceeds, he said, are unlikely to be distributed during the lifetimes of any of the cousins.

But they could in time provide increased income from the trusts for their children and their children's children. These future generations will carry on a philanthropic-mindedness that has been a part of the family since John D. Rockefeller founded the dynasty. Using his fortunes from the Standard Oil Company, in 1913 he created the Rockefeller Foundation, one of the country's 10 wealthiest philanthropies, with assets of $2 billion today. He leaves a legacy of great institutions including the University of Chicago, the Rockefeller University and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Shaping the youngest generation in the family's philanthropic mission starts at a tender age. For example, Alida Rockefeller Messinger, 40, says she was only 5 years old when her late father, John D. Rockefeller, 3rd, began talking to her about giving.

''My father and mother's greatest fear was that their four children might take their wealth for granted and grow up spoiled and arrogant,'' she said. ''They wanted us to learn early that with wealth comes responsibility.''

In fact, the cousins, who include physicians, lawyers, educators and environmentalists, will leave their children a strong history of philanthropy. Although the cousins' inheritance has not been quantified and extends through a network of more than 100 financial trusts, their combined annual personal contributions to philanthropic causes are said to total in the tens of millions. They contribute to the schools where they have studied, the communities in which they live and a range of highly individualized interests in the arts, sciences, health, in civil rights causes and now, increasingly in environmental movements, on both the global and local levels.

Still, the cousins have grown up in the formidable shadow of their fathers and uncles. John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s six children, the third generation of Rockefellers, formed the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in 1949, which has since been the main vehicle for the family's charitable activities.

These scions, the so-called ''Brothers Generation,'' include John D. Rockefeller 3d, who is known worldwide for his support of population control and as a patron of Asian culture; Laurance Rockefeller, a venture capitalist and conservationist; David Sr., the former chairman of Chase Manhattan, and civic leader; Winthrop, a former Governor of Arkansas, and Nelson, the United States vice president and former New York Governor.

Only Laurance, 79, and David, 75, survive. The others, including Abby, the only Rockefeller sister, died during the 1970's.

The cousins have fewer resources than the brothers. But they have established several individual foundations with their trust money.

And since the mid-80's, they have begun to exert greater influence over the affairs of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In 1985, Laurance resigned his seat on the board, giving the cousins 8 of 9 family seats on the fund's 17-member board. And two years ago, David Rockefeller, Jr., a board member and a leader among the cousins, succeeded his father as chairman of the fund's board.

David Jr. has played a pivotal role in reorganizing and strengthening the family institutions. And with his talents for conciliating differences, he is trying reunite the cousins, who have never been a cohesive group and many of whom have an almost obsessive insistence on privacy. At the urgings of his father, and to insure a smooth transition, David Jr. invited the other cousins as well as outside experts to help shape an agenda for the fund.

Their suggestions helped form the foundation of ''A strategy for the 80's,'' an agenda adopted by the fund in 1983. The agenda is built on a ''one world'' theme, pushing the fund further into environmental programs. While the fund was an early contributor to research on greenhouse gases and global warming, today it invests fully 40 percent of its money in programs to protect the world's water, forests, land and air resources.

The recent sale of Rockefeller Center to Mitsubishi is in keeping with that spirit of ''one world.'' David Jr. said Thursday that it was ''a reminder of how small the global village has become and the importance of close partnerships among the world's peoples and nations.''

Alluding to the new relationship between the Rockefeller and Mitsubishi interests, he added: ''The closer we operate in business, culture or the environment, the more secure and healthier we will be.''

The cousins' recent shift comes years after soul-searching. Most are now in their 40's and 50's, and came of age during the turbulent 60's, a time of campus demonstrations against the Vietnam war and clamoring for social change. Some of them marched, joined anti-war groups and supported nuclear disarmament efforts.

It was a period of alienation and confusion, and a number of them, troubled by the times and their own family identity, sought psychiatric help. Steven, 53, recalls the period as painful. Now a professor of religion at Middlebury College in Vermont, he has embraced Zen-Buddhism, which he said ''opened him up'' but has not closed him off to Christianity.

Some changed their names to disassociate themselves from the family. Sandra Rockefeller, Abby's daughter, dropped the family name and still lives privately in Cambridge, Mass.

Still, a few have high profiles. The most visible cousin is John D. Rockefeller 4th, the 52-year-old senator and former governor of West Virginia.

And most have given to their favorite causes privately. Many of the cousins are active in environmental issues. Abby M. O'Neill, the oldest of the cousins, is vice-chairman of the board of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Preserving the Virginia landmark city has been an interest of the Rockefeller family since the 1920's.

Abby Rockefeller, David Sr.'s daughter, shocked some family members when she set up business in Cambridge to market a Swedish composting toilet - a concept that is beginning to catch on.

Winthrop Paul Rockefeller, Jr., 41, who is said to have inherited at least $550 million as his father's sole heir, is believed to be the richest cousin. An outdoorsman, his wide-ranging interests include serving on the boards of the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, which seeks to protect migrating waterfowl, and the Bill Foundation, which is concerned with preserving migrating species like marlin and sailfish. He is chief executive officer of Winrock Farms, which raises livestock and crops.

The health of the environment is also a major concern of Larry Rockefeller, an attorney, and his wife, Wendy Gordan Rockefeller, an expert in toxicology. Both are on the staff of the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that campaigned successfully to remove the ripening agent, Alar, from the market. Wendy is also a co-chairperson with Meryl Streep of Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits, a public education campaign that called attention to the dangers of the Alar, which is sprayed on apples.

Social causes also a favorite cause among the cousins. David Jr.'s private philanthropic interests focus on strengthening American public education. He is chairman of Recruiting New Teachers, an organization in Cambridge that elicited almost 250,000 responses to a campaign by the Advertising Council seeking pre-college instructors.

Two years ago, Dr. Lucy Waletzky, a Washington psychiatrist and co-founder of the Medical Illness Counseling Center, created ''DateABLE,'' in Chevy Chase, Md., a service that helps people who live in isolation with and without physical disabilities to meet and make social contacts. ''It's a dating service with 200 members and chapters now in San Antonio and Cleveland,'' she said.

Alida Rockefeller supports a radio station owned and operated by the Oglala Indians on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. Neva R. Goodwin, an economist, serves on the board of the College of the Atlantic, a small institution in Bar Harbor, Me., which gives only one degree - in human ecology.

In the cousins group, where women outnumber men, Laura R. Chasin has taken the lead in carving out an interest in ''reproductive responsibility,'' the name she gives a bundle of concerns including contraceptive research and pro-choice and civil rights issues. ''I'm prepared to spend the next 20 years learning what I have to know,'' she said after calling together an informal meeting of experts this summer to outline a possible philanthropic role in these causes.

Although their interests remain wide-ranging, the cousins are developing new cohesion in their private philanthropic efforts. Two years ago, they formed a Family Philanthropy Committee. Headed by Steven Rockefeller, the group meets every two months toidentify areas of mutual interest and collaboration. Three generations sit on the 10-member committee: David Rockefeller Sr., seven members of the fourth generation and two from the fifth.

In addition, the cousins appointed Ira S. Hirschfield to head another committee to more closely coordinate the philanthropic endeavors of the individidual family members, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund, a smaller philanthropy, with $34 million in assets, createdin 1967 to serve as a training ground for the young family members.

The arrangement was made in part because of the dovetailing interests of the cousins and the foundations. For instance, because of an initiative by Larry Rockefeller, the Rockefeller Family Fund was prompted to support the Conservation Law Foundation, which using litigation, has pressured utilities to develop energy-conservation practices.

That the cousins are impelled to continue their great-grandfather's legacy was underscored when the family and guests convened to honor the patriarch's 150th birthday last weekend at his 2,700-acre Pocantico Hills estate, with a sweeping view of the Hudson.

As David Rockefeller Jr. reflected the accomplishments of that ''legendary man,'' he asked the group to ponder several thoughts. ''What is the current plight of man?'' he asked the group. ''What is the condition of our planetary nest? And what is philanthropy doing to respond to these conditions?''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 3, Page 4 of the National edition with the headline: Philanthropy for the 21st Century. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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