But also by virtue of his name, he had what he calls a “parallel career.” That was the job, as psychologically taxing as it was financially rewarding, of being a Rockefeller. For David and his siblings–not to mention his father–lived in the enormous shadow of their grandfather, the first John D. Rockefeller. Along with their great wealth, they inherited unwanted (except by Nelson) notoriety, a sometimes debilitating sense of inadequacy (except for Nelson) and a moral compulsion to devote much of their money to philanthropy.
In David’s telling, his father, John D. Jr., was a tightly wrapped bundle of insecurity. He was beset by “shyness and introspection,” and emotionally dependent on his wife. This meant he had little time for his five children, and David, the youngest, was frequently left to “play alone or with a tutor who came out for the weekend.” Communications with Father often took the form of chilly letters that bristled with moral admonitions and a Calvinist summons to duty. It was not a happy childhood, and it left David with a shortage of self-confidence that he had to work to repair.
Still, David became de facto leader of the family after Nelson’s death in 1979. It’s not clear, however, how good a leader he was of Chase bank. He enjoyed extraordinary entree to world leaders (100,000 names in his Rolodex!), and these high-level contacts led to some important deals, particularly during the 1970s, when the recycling of petro-dollars from the Arab countries through American banks saved the world from financial crisis. But some of these loans went spectacularly sour in the ’80s. And running a bank as if it were the State Department seemed old-fashioned, even at the time. Citibank was a far more successful bank.
Rockefeller makes much of Chase’s philanthropies. They may not have made the bank stronger, but he is sure they made it better. Those Calvinist letters from his father left their mark. “As I have learned,” he writes, “duty is liberating. It forces you to transcend your own limitations and makes you do things that may not come naturally but must be done because they are right.” That is the Rockefeller credo, and if it has an antique ring in this cynical age, that may be one reason so many of today’s businessmen have fallen into trouble.
