Nelson Rockefeller

Nelson Rockefeller, the son and grandson of billionaires and a billionaire in his own right when there fewer than a baker's dozen of such creatures, was a major force in national politics for three decades. Rocky bestrode the State of New York like a colossus in the 1960s, serving four terms as governor of the Empire State between 1959 and 1973. Under his helmsman-ship, the size and scope of the state government was vastly expanded, as was the state debt. Born in Bar Harbor, Maine four days after the Fourth of July in 1908, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the third child and the second son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, a political power-broker as the head of the Senate's Finance Committee. Aldrich battled his fellow patrician, President Theodore Roosevelt, over T.R's political reforms. Ironically, Aldrich's grandson would inherit T.R.'s mantle as head of the progressive wing