Notes for: John Davison Rockefeller, Jr.
He may have been heir to the world’s largest fortune, but John D. Rockefeller Jr. was an intensely shy young man, so shy that he decided to spurn his 1893 acceptance letter from Yale because he thought he would be "lost in the crowd" on the New Haven campus. It was a decision that worked to the benefit of young Rockefeller, Brown, and arguably the world, as the son of the billionaire Standard Oil baron grew into his very public role as the leading philanthropist of the Twentieth Century. Rockefeller would later credit his years at Brown University, where he graduated in 1897, with helping him emerge from his shell. He ultimately was elected president of the junior class and also served as senior manager of the Brown football team.
By 1901, when Rockefeller was working with his father, the senior Rockefeller was largely out of the oil business and had moved full-time into philanthropic work, a mission for which the son was well suited. In 1920 John D. Rockefeller Jr. served as chairman of a special Manhattan grand jury that investigated white-slave trafficking, an experience that sharpened his interest in aiding the poor and fighting diseases of poverty. He once said that wealth should be "an instrumentality of constructive social living," and he spent much of his life proving the point. In all, Rockefeller gave an estimated $537 million to charity, an amount equivalent to billions today. He built New York’s Rockefeller Center, donated the land for the United Nations complex, and during World War II helped establish the United Service Organizations (USO), the social-service agency for members of the armed forces and their families. It was during the war that he uttered his credo "I Believe," words familiar to Brown University students entering the campus library that bears his name. [Brown University web site]