Born: December 4, 1918
Died: March 18, 1990
Married: Molly Gillett Rockefeller
Children: Mary Gillett Burchell, Edith Rockefeller Laird, Sarah Rockefeller Bogdanovitch
William Rockefeller was a great-grandnephew of John D. Rockefeller Sr.
New York Times, March 18, 1990
William Rockefeller Is Dead at 71; An Ex-President of the A.S.P.C.A.
William Rockefeller, a former president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and a former chairman of the Metropolitan Opera Association, died of lung cancer on Friday at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan. He was 71 years old and had homes in Rye, N.Y., and Paul Smiths, N.Y.
He was a great-grandnephew of John D. Rockefeller Sr. and had been a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Shearman & Sterling since the mid-1950's.
''He enjoyed the arts, and this was one of the ways he felt he could contribute,'' Mr. Rockefeller's daughter, Sarah Bogdanovitch, said of her father's service since the mid-1940's as a member and later chairman and president of the Metropolitan Opera Association.
At the time of his death, Mr. Rockefeller was the chairman of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation in Morristown, N.J., which makes grants to support secondary education and the arts.
Interest in Animal Welfare
From 1956 to 1964, Mr. Rockefeller was president of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. He was also a former president of the Westminster Kennel Club and the American Kennel Club.
''The family has always been interested in animal welfare, which in our minds is an indication of human welfare,'' Mrs. Bogdanovitch said. Mr. Rockefeller was also chairman of the Baker Institute at Cornell University, an organization that does research on animal health.
A 1940 graduate of Yale University, Mr. Rockefeller was chairman of the university's alumni board from the late 1960's to the mid-1970's and was awarded the Yale Medal of Honor three years ago. He earned his law degree from Columbia University in 1948.
During World War II, Mr. Rockefeller served on destroyers and cruisers in the Pacific, rising to the rank of lieutenant commander and winning the Bronze Star.
He was a member of the board of the Cranston Print Works and Oneida Ltd., a tableware manufacturer; secretary of the board of Memorial Sloan-Kettering; a member of the board of Paul Smith's College, and a former chairman of the board of the Oldfields School, a boarding school in Glencoe, Md.
Mr. Rockefeller is survived by his wife, Mary; three daughters, Sarah, of Lake Clear, N.Y., Mary Fogarty of Rye and Edith Laird of Seattle; his mother, Florence Farr of Manhattan; a brother, Frederic, of Barrington, R.I.; two sisters, Anne Morrison of Colorado Springs, Colo., and Florence DeVecchi of Cambridge, Mass., and six grandchildren.
