Notes for: Winthrop Paul "Win" Rockefeller
Win Rockefeller attended Pembroke College, Oxford University and graduated from Texas Christian University in 1974. He served from 1981 to 1995 on the Arkansas State Police Commission. In 1991, he was appointed by President George H. W. Bush to serve on the President’s Council on Rural America and was elected chairman. Rockefeller was the immediate past president of the Quapaw Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America and was on the Boy Scouts National Board of Directors at the time of his death. After his father's death, Rockefeller bought Winrock Farms Inc., founded by his father in 1953, and became involved in banking, retailing, automobile dealerships, farming and the resort industry. He was an active member of the National Federation of Independent Business. Rockefeller supported literacy councils, and in 1997 created the Books in the Attic program, in which Boy Scouts collect used books to distribute. Two of his eight children have Down syndrome, and Rockefeller and his second wife, Lisenne, started what is now the Academy at Riverdale, a school for children with learning disabilities. Rockefeller also founded The Billfish Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting marlins, swordfish and other billfish. As a National Rifle Association member, he sponsored Project ChildSafe to distribute free trigger locks in the state. Win Rockefeller was ranked # 283 on the Forbes Magazine list of the nation's wealthiest people in 2005, with a fortune the magazine estimated at $1.2 billion. As the Arkansas lieutenant governor, a part-time job, he forwarded his $34,673 state salary to charity. Rockefeller was well known for representing the more liberal wing of the Republican Party in Arkansas. He had drawn a great deal of criticism from conservatives for his support of Planned Parenthood and legal abortion. He was elected Lt. Governor of Arkansas in a 1996 special election triggered by the resignation of Governor Jim Guy Tucker and the promotion of then-Lt. Governor Mike Huckabee. Rockefeller was subsequently re-elected in 1998 to a full four-year term, receiving 67 percent of the vote. He was elected once again in 2002 with 60 percent of the vote. Rockefeller had announced his candidacy for governor and was expected to face the more conservative Asa Hutchinson in the Republican primary election in May 2006. On July 20, 2005, however, he bowed out of the race, citing a blood disorder that could develop into leukemia if untreated. Rockefeller underwent unsuccessful bone marrow transplants in October 2005 and March 2006. He died peacefully at 10:37 a.m. on July 16, 2006 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, surrounded by his family. He was survived by his second wife, Lisenne, his mother Barbara "Bobo" Rockefeller, three daughters, five sons, a granddaughter, a stepbrother and a stepsister.