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Courtesy U.S. Senate Historical Office
ROCKEFELLER, Nelson Aldrich (1908-1979)
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ROCKEFELLER, NELSON ALDRICH, (grandson of Nelson W. Aldrich; uncle of John D. [Jay] Rockefeller IV), a Vice President of the United States; born in Bar Harbor, Hancock County, Maine, July 8, 1908; attended Lincoln School of Teachers' College at Columbia University, New York, N.Y., 1926; graduated, Dartmouth College 1930; engaged in oil, real estate, and banking businesses, and family philanthropic activities; served variously as trustee, treasurer, president, chairman of the board of Museum of Modern Art in New York City 1932-1975; director, Office of Inter-American Affairs 1940-1944; Assistant Secretary of State for Latin-American Affairs 1944-1945; returned to family philanthropic activities and helped establish American International Association; member and chairman of President's Advisory Committee on Government Organization 1953-1958; Under Secretary of the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 1953-1954; Special Assistant to the President for Foreign Affairs 1954-1955; Governor of New York 1959-1973; unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, 1964, and 1968; nominated by President Gerald R. Ford on August 20, 1974, under the provisions of the twenty-fifth amendment to the Constitution, to be the Forty-first Vice President of the United States; confirmed by the Congress and took the oath of office on December 19, 1974, and served until January 20, 1977, when the term ended; returned to family philanthropic activities and worked extensively on his art collection in New York, N.Y., where he died on January 26, 1979; cremated; ashes interred at the family estate, Pocantico Hills, N.Y.

  • Kramer, Michael, and Sam Roberts. "I Never Wanted to be Vice President of Anything": An Investigative Biography of Nelson Rockefeller. New York: Basic Books, 1976.
  • Light, Paul C. "Vice-Presidential Influence Under Rockefeller and Mondale." Political Science Quarterly 98 (Winter 1983-84): 617-640.
  • Morris, Joe Alex. Nelson Rockefeller: A Biography. New York: Harper, 1960.
  • Persico, Joseph. The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982.
  • Reich, Cary. The Life of Nelson A. Rockefeller: Worlds to Conquer, 1908-1958. New York: Doubleday, 1996.
  • Rockefeller, Nelson A. The Future of Freedom: A Bicentennial Series of Speeches. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1976.
  • Turner, Michael. The Vice President as Policy Maker: Rockefeller in the Ford White House. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.
  • Underwood, James E., and William J. Daniels. Governor Rockefeller in New York: The Apex of Pragmatic Liberalism in the United States. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982.