Winthrop Rockefeller, 57, Arkansas Lt. Governor With New York Heritage

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The New York Sun

The Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas, Win Rockefeller, an unassuming billionaire who inherited his father’s philanthropic spirit and hoped to serve someday as Arkansas governor, as his father did, died yesterday after unsuccessful treatments for a blood disorder. He was 57.

Rockefeller abandoned his gubernatorial campaign after being diagnosed last July with an unclassified myeloproliferative disorder that can lead to leukemia.

Rockefeller, a Republican, was the son of Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, who was elected to two-year terms in 1966 and 1968. His father died in 1973 at 60 of cancer.

He took over Winrock Farms Inc., which his father founded in Arkansas in 1953, and became involved in banking, retailing, automobile dealerships, and resorts. Long before holding an elective office, Rockefeller was active in public causes and held posts on the Arkansas State Police Commission and the national Council on Rural America.

The great-grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller ranked No. 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 lieutenant governor, a part-time job, he forwarded his $34,673 state salary to charity.

Rockefeller entered politics in 1996, winning a special election for lieutenant governor after Whitewater prosecutors successfully convicted then-Governor Jim Guy Tucker in a fraud case.

Rockefeller subsequently won reelection twice, winning 67 percent of the vote in 1998 and 60 percent in 2002.

Under the state’s term-limits law, Rockefeller could not serve again as lieutenant governor.

Born Winthrop Paul Rockefeller on Sept. 17, 1948, in New York, he was the only child of the late Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and Barbara “Bobo” Sears, the daughter of an immigrant Lithuanian coal miner.An uncle was former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller.

Rockefeller’s father was Arkansas’ first Republican governor since Reconstruction, after moving to the state in 1953.


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