Oral History Interview with

NANCY C. ROCKEFELLER

by Esther H. Smith

Copyrightc~ 1978 The Greenwich Library

Greenwich, Connecticut

pr 1. g 1978

Greenwich Library
Greenwich, Connecticut

	                 Use of this Transcript

The reader should keep in mind that this interview represents the recollections and point of view of one person only. To verify historical facts, the information should be checked with other sources.

This edition has been prepared by the Oral History Project of the Friends of the Greenwich Library. The project was conceived by Barbara Bloch in 1973 in connection with the national Bicentennial and was sponsored originally by the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich and the Greenwich Library.

The material has been edited to improve narrative flow and to make it more readable than the verbatim transcript, but the words are the narrator’s and have not been changed. Portions have been transposed to improve continuity and segments of a later version, dictated by the narrator in 1976, have been blended in to supplement the original text. Proper names have been left as spoken, but can be found fully expanded in the index. The original text of the interview, the complete text of the dictated version, in which ‘the narrator acknowledges the help of many more people, and the tapes are stored in the Greenwich Library for those who wish to refer to them.

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

FRIENDS OF THE GREENWICH LIBRARY

CHAIRMAN — Barbara Ornstein

LIBRARY LIAISON — Marion Nicholson

EDITOR - Catherine McNamara

Betty S. Cullen
Judith Keig
Esther H. Smith

PRODUCTION -	Helen R. Simpson Allyn Budington

PORTRAIT - Karl Gleeson

This publication has been made possible by a gift from

Tissa Rockefeller Stone

	Nancy C. Rockefeller
…. was born in New York City on December 15, 1900, the daughter of Bertha Sherlock and Andrew Carnegie 2nd.

She lived on Cumberland Island, Georgia, during her girlhood years and was educated at the Foxcroft School in Middleburg, Virginia, class of 1919. After her marriage to James Stillman Rockefeller in 1925, she moved to Greenwich, where she has lived for the past fifty—two years.

Mrs. Rockefeller has four children: James Stillman, Jr., of Camden, Maine; Nancy Copp of Memphis, Tennessee; Andrew C. of Greenwich; Georgia Rose of New York City; and fifteen grandchildren.

Ever since her arrival in Greenwich, Mrs. Rockefeller has been an active volunteer in social service. She has received numerous citations for her work in the Greenwich conmunity and was the first recipient of the Greenwich Time Clubwoman of the Year award in 1964. In 1977 she received the first certificate presented by the Greenwich Exchange Club to the Outstanding Citizen of Greenwich, and has twice been cited by the Nutmegger with cover stories on her work at The Mews and Nathaniel Witherell. In the June, 1978, issue, she and William Sherman were named Nutmeggers of the Decade for their “outstanding devotion to the Town of Greenwich and its people.”

In addition to her leadership in the organizations discussed in her narration, Mrs. Rockefeller has been a member of the Greenwich Hospital Men’s Board and Women’s Board. She is a member of OAR, Hortulus, the advisory committee of the Commission on Aging, Homemaker Service, MerryGo—Round, and the Nathaniel Witherell Auxilliary.

This interview was done for the friends of the Greenwich Library by Esther H. Smith on October 3, 1975, at The Mews, Bolling Place.

MEETING THE NEEDS OF A COMMUNITY

An interview with

NANCY C. ROCKEFELLER

by Esther H. Smith

SMITH:	Mrs. Rockefeller, you’ve had such a full life. I wonder if you could start at the beginning and tell about your entrance into Greenwich as a bride.

ROCKEFELLER:	Well, we were married in 1925, and I came to Greenwich to live in ‘26, and I’ve been here ever since. My mother-in-law, Mrs. William G. Rockefeller, is really the person that put me on the map in Greenwich because she was responsible for doing so much for Greenwich, The first thing she did was to buy the lot where the Merry-Go-Round clubhouse and the Greenwich Center [for Child and Family Service] now stand. She ran a day nursery in the present little red house, and I was put on the board. And through that I became terribly interested in everything that was going on in Greenwich.

Miss Mary Lanier (later Mrs. Irving Day] was caring for war orphans in a home [Emily Bruce Shelter] in Bruce Park. Mary’s helpers gave out, and the problem was where would the children go. Mrs. Winfield Shiras and I decided to take them and found a children’s shelter for children who needed temporary care for one reason or the other. We gathered quite a few of our friends together, and we rented a house on the corner of the Post Road where the A&P is now. We took the two matrons that Mary Day had, a Mrs. Riley and a Miss Jackson, and we moved them in with about ten children.

We were in our early twenties and knew nothing about social work or anything like that, but we felt that we could run it. And looking back, I don’t know how we did it. The first week end we went down to see if everything was all right, and the matron had run off with two of the children. I have to laugh, because Mrs. Wonham had to chase all over Long Island to find them. Well, we found them and got them back, and everything was all right.

We ran the Greenwich Shelter on the Post Road for quite a few years. We would go to the Board of Estimate for funds because we thought that it was charity that the Town of Greenwich should take care of. I can remember going many times and hearing Roger Baldwin say, 1’Well, what are you girls here for?’1 And Mrs. Coombe, who was the treasurer, would get up and say, “Well, we need thirty-five thousand dollars to run the shelter.” And we generally got it.

But at that point in Greenwich there was only one charitable organization that I can remember, and that was the Social Service

League with one worker. And I suppose we surprised the Board of Estimate so much that, not knowing what else to do, they gave us the money. We’d have a drive to make up the difference in the budget.

It was all volunteer work at the shelter. The main purpose, really, of the shelter was to take children if the mother became ill and had to go to the hospital, or had a large family and her husband deserted her, or if she was having a new baby. We would take the children until they could return home. We were supposed never to keep a child over four weeks.

When we first took over Mary Day’s children from the Bruce Park house, there were two children who were mentally unfit to be with other children. And that, I think, is where I got sort of mixed up with the Nathaniel Witherell. We asked the Nathaniel Witherell if they would take them until such time as we could place them in Newtown. And they did. I remember going up to see them and finding them out in the broiling sun tied to a tree. And this upset me so that, from then on in, I became terribly interested in Nathaniel Witherell, which was at that point run as what we called a pesthouse. There was a TB ward, and anybody who had any contagious disease was sent up there. It was under the Board of Health, and I hate to say it, but it was very poorly run.

Well, to go back to the shelter, it was all volunteer work. None of us had any experience with social work. In fact, I think in that day there were no social workers as we call them now. We just went on and did it; used our common sense.

I was what was called “the investigator,” which would really be a terrible thing to be called at this point. I can remember going into every home, I think, in Greenwich that needed us. I think I knew almost everybody in Chickahominy and they became great friends.

I can’t quite remember how many children we could take, but I think it was around twenty. We fed them and had a playroom on the ground floor, and they slept on the second floor. And I think, personally, we did a pretty good job for amateurs, with two matrons and a cook.

After a few years the board decided we really should get a professional worker. At that time professionals were just coming into being. I remember the first one we had at the shelter, which I think probably was the first social worker- that Greenwich ever had, was a Miss Bolster. And I can see her now. She wore large spectacles, which in those days was not the vogue. She had dark hair cut in a Dutch bob and was a very nice person. She took over my job of investigating. She was the one that decided who we’d take, and she really ran the place for several years till Mrs. Brinckerhoff came to us.

We look back and think of all the terrible things that could have happened, but the Lord took care of us. Nothing ever happened to any of the children, nor can I remember any terrible crisis.

Along about 1932, I think it was, my mother—in—law, Mrs. William

G.	Rockefeller, who adored children, decided that we really were doing quite a good job. She already owned the strip from Arch Street back to the present center. Mrs. Rockefeller built the present lovely brick building in back of the nursery for the shelter. Her great friend, Theodore Blake, was the architect. My sister—in—law, Mrs. Godfrey Rockefeller, was the first president in the new building, and it continued as the Greenwich Shelter till 1936.

My mother—in—law died in 1935. She left the shelter to my sister—in—law, and the day nursery building came to me. After that II talked to my sister-in—law and we decided that, seeing that the shelter was for children, it would be better to move the day nursery children from 38 Arch Street into the shelter and have all the children together, leaving the house on Arch Street free to do something else. And so that’s what happened. All the day nursery children were moved back to the shelter, and in due time they became a family welfare center and changed the name to Greenwich Center, with a staff of social workers.

Well, along about that time we had the terrible Depression. And I’d been a great friend of Georgina Davids, who was the Charity Commissioner at that point in one room at the Town Hall. Mrs. Stevens, the former commissioner, had about ten families who needed help. So when the Depression came, we got up to I don’t know how many families. Around five hundred, I think. The Town was spending a great deal of money, and one room certainly wasn’t adequate.

So I helped Miss Davids, and we moved the Welfare Department into a small store on Lewis Street; and that, too, soon became too small. So we moved the Welfare Department up to East Putnam Avenue to a private home known as One Elm, which is no longer there. It