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Jay Rockefeller, who served two terms as governor of West Virginia and five terms in the U.S. Senate, has died at 89. He died Thursday night at his home in Washington, according to West Virginia Public Broadcasting. His death was confirmed by Mary Stewart, vice president for external affairs at WETA, the public broadcasting station where his wife, Sharon, serves as president and CEO.
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Shop NowRockefeller left the Senate in 2015, ending nearly 50 years in public service.
Born John Davison Rockefeller IV in New York City in 1937, weeks after the death of his great-grandfather John D. Rockefeller, he came from one of the nation’s richest families and spent a half century serving one of its poorest states. He first arrived in West Virginia in 1964 as a Volunteers In Service To America (VISTA) volunteer. In 1966 he drew national attention by switching his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat, and that year he won a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates. He became secretary of state in 1968.
His first run for governor, in 1972, ended in defeat to Republican Arch Moore. He stayed in the state as president of West Virginia Wesleyan College, then won the governorship in 1976 and served two terms. Natural disaster, strikes and a worsening economy marked those years, including the 111-day national coal strike of 1977-1978. Rockefeller refused to call on the National Guard to suppress the striking miners. When the strike ended, President Jimmy Carter appointed him to lead the first major federal study of coal mining in three decades.
In 1984 he defeated Republican John Raese for the Senate. He was a lead author of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997, a federal-state program providing low-cost coverage to children in families whose incomes are too high for Medicaid. Speaking in 2013, he called fully funding the program “a moral imperative” and said health care “should be seen as a right, not a privilege.”
He also drew criticism for recommending a West Virginia trade office in Nagoya, Japan. The office opened in 1990, and Toyota announced in 1996 that it would build a factory in Putnam County. Japan later gave him its highest foreign award, the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun.
In 1999 he founded a neurosciences institute in Morgantown to honor his late mother, who died after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He married Sharon Percy, daughter of Illinois Sen. Charles Percy, in 1967. They had four children.
