By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
New York Times
MAY 19, 2015
Happy Rockefeller, the
socialite whose 1963 marriage to Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, soon
after both had been divorced, raised a political storm in a more genteel time
and may have cost him the Republican presidential nomination in 1964, died on
Tuesday at her home in Tarrytown, N.Y. She was 88.
The family said in a statement
that she died after a brief illness.
Beyond the 1964 nomination, won
by Senator Barry M. Goldwater of Arizona, the scandal helped scuttle any
further presidential hopes Mr. Rockefeller had. While his governorship remained
secure until 1973, he came no closer to the Oval Office than the vice
presidency, to which President Gerald R. Ford appointed him in 1974, ending the
musical-chairs turmoil set off by the Watergate scandal.
In an era when marital
infidelity and divorce were toxic for presidential candidates, many Americans
were shocked when Margaretta Fitler Murphy, called Happy, and Mr. Rockefeller,
who was nearly 18 years older than she, married on May 4, 1963. He was in the
second of his four terms as governor and a leading contender for the presidency
at the time, having run strongly in 1960.
As the couple left for a
honeymoon in Venezuela, exposés retailed gossip of their extramarital affair
and detailed their out-of-state divorces — Mr. Rockefeller’s in 1962 from Mary
Todhunter Clark Rockefeller, his wife of 31 years and the mother of his five
children; Mrs. Murphy’s from Dr. James Slater Murphy, to whom she surrendered
custody of their four children five weeks before marrying Mr. Rockefeller.
Many Republican leaders and
voters were scandalized. Former Senator Prescott S. Bush, a Connecticut
Republican and a longtime Rockefeller supporter (and the father of one future
president and the grandfather of another), declared: “Have we come to the point
where a governor can desert his wife and children, and persuade a young woman
to abandon her four children and husband? Have we come to the point where one
of the two great parties will confer its greatest honor on such a one? I
venture to hope not.”
No divorced man had ever won
the presidency. Former Gov. Adlai E. Stevenson of Illinois, a Democrat who
divorced in 1949, had been the most recent to try. He won his party’s
nomination in 1952 and 1956 but lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower in back-to-back
landslides. In Britain, Mr. Rockefeller was likened tendentiously to King
Edward VIII, who abdicated in 1936 to marry a twice-divorced American
socialite, Wallis Simpson. Polls that showed Mr. Rockefeller leading Mr.
Goldwater quickly turned around.
“Only a few weeks ago Gov.
Nelson A. Rockefeller was far out in front,” The Philadelphia Inquirer said.
“Now, abruptly, the picture has changed. The Rockefeller image has been
damaged.”
Mr. Rockefeller faced the
divorce issue squarely by taking his new wife on the campaign trail. She
handled the glare of publicity well, gamely greeting crowds, even donning
maternity clothes as the campaign, and her pregnancy, progressed. Some advisers
opposed her involvement, but she was an unexpected hit, with many voters
responding warmly to what they called her cheerful, artless charm.
“The first shock waves generated by the
marriage of Governor Rockefeller to the former Mrs. Murphy seem to have
simmered down to a ripple,” Gwen Gibson reported in The New York Herald
Tribune. “One look at this wholesome, dimple-chinned woman, and the most
critical matron is apt to remark: ‘She doesn’t strike me as a femme fatale.’ ”
Still, Mr. Rockefeller’s
primary results were dismal. His support faded, especially among women, and he
withdrew from the race. Mr. Goldwater lost the election to his Democratic
opponent, President Lyndon B. Johnson, in a landslide.
Mr. Rockefeller resumed life as
governor in Albany, and his wife gave birth to two sons, Nelson Aldrich
Rockefeller Jr. in 1964 and Mark Fitler Rockefeller in 1967. She appeared with
the governor at official and unofficial functions, and when he was an
undeclared candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968, she
took an active part in his effort to win support, becoming a political asset in
the view of many.
Though Mr. Rockefeller did not
enter primaries, he campaigned, sought uncommitted delegates and cited his
availability for a draft. Richard M. Nixon was nominated on the first ballot
and went on to defeat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey for the presidency.
In 1974, as her husband awaited
Senate confirmation as vice president, Mrs. Rockefeller learned she had breast
cancer and had two mastectomies, five weeks apart. Weeks earlier, President
Ford’s wife, Betty, also had a mastectomy. They and Shirley Temple Black were
among the first to announce mastectomies publicly and were widely credited with
raising national awareness for the early detection of breast cancer.
During his vice presidency, Mr.
Rockefeller and his wife lived in their own home in Washington, though the
official vice-presidential residence was established during his tenure at the
former home of the chief of naval operations on the grounds of the United States
Naval Observatory. They hosted several official functions there.
As the nation’s second lady,
Mrs. Rockefeller was a low-key presence in Washington, and often spent time in
New York and at the Rockefeller estate at Pocantico Hills, N.Y. Mr. Rockefeller
served until a defeated President Ford left office in January 1977.
A year after Mr. Rockefeller
died, in 1979, Ronald Reagan became the only divorced man elected to the
presidency. His 1949 divorce from the actress Jane Wyman was not a major
campaign issue in 1980, largely because it had occurred three decades earlier
and because divorce, in a nation where it had become commonplace, no longer
seemed a serious blemish on a candidate’s character.
Margaretta Large Fitler was
born in Bryn Mawr, Pa., on June 9, 1926, one of two children of Margaretta
Large Harrison Fitler and her first husband, William Wonderly Fitler Jr., a
yachtsman and heir to an $8 million cordage fortune. A scion of Main Line
privilege, Happy — she acquired the nickname for her sunny disposition — was a
descendant of Gen. George Gordon Meade, who commanded Union forces at the
Battle of Gettysburg. She and her brother, William, were often left in charge
of servants, and her parents divorced when she was 10.
She was a popular but
indifferent student at the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr. After graduating in
1944, she became a wartime driver for the Women’s Volunteer Service in
Philadelphia. She made her debut in 1946 and married Dr. Murphy two years
later. They had four children, three of whom survive her: James B. II,
Margaretta M. Bickford and Carol M. Lyden. The fourth, Malinda M. Menotti, died
in 2005.
Mrs. Rockefeller is also
survived by her sons with Mr. Rockefeller, Nelson Jr. and Mark, and 14
grandchildren.
Dr. Murphy, a boyhood chum of
Mr. Rockefeller’s brother David, followed his father, Dr. James B. Murphy, a
renowned cancer researcher, into the Rockefeller Institute in New York in 1950.
He became a noted virologist there. The Murphy and Rockefeller families were
neighbors in Manhattan, had summer homes in Seal Harbor, Me., and shared social
orbits. The Murphys even built a home near the Rockefeller estate, Kykuit, at
Pocantico Hills, overlooking the Hudson River in Westchester County.
In 1958, Mrs. Murphy became a
volunteer in Nelson Rockefeller’s first campaign for governor. After his
election, she became his confidential secretary — and, later reports said, his
mistress.
After Mr. Rockefeller’s death,
Mrs. Rockefeller and her sons gave up the Pocantico Hills mansion, which had
been home to generations of Rockefellers; it was given to the National Trust
for Historic Preservation and opened for public tours in 1994. But she kept a
Japanese house designed by Junzo Yoshimura on the estate and an apartment in
New York. She had lived in her home in Tarrytown for more than 50 years.
Mrs. Rockefeller continued her
husband’s activities as a patron of the arts and philanthropist, and for many
years maintained a busy schedule of social, cultural and charity functions,
squired by her sons and members of the Rockefeller clan. Her name and picture
were often in society columns, alongside political, business and entertainment
leaders and royalty.
Enid Nemy and Daniel E. Slotnik
contributed reporting.
A version of this article
appears in print on May 20, 2015, on page A21 of the New York edition with the
headline: Happy Rockefeller, 88, Whose Marriage to Governor Scandalized Voters,
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