Win Rockefeller

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller, the unassuming billionaire who last year abandoned a race for Arkansas governor, a post once held by his father - died Sunday after unsuccessful treatments for a blood disorder, his office said. He was 57.

Rockefeller died Sunday morning at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences with his family present, said Steve Brawner, the lieutenant governor's spokesman.

Bone marrow transplants Oct. 7 and March 29 at Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center failed to cure an unclassified myeloproliferative disorder. He returned to Arkansas on July 8 and immediately entered the hospital. The next day, Rockefeller notified Gov. Mike Huckabee that he could not continue his duties, at least temporarily.

Huckabee cut short a trip to New Orleans for the Southern Governors Association meeting and was returning to Little Rock, spokeswoman Alice Stewart said.

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 donated his $34,673 state salary to charity.

Huckabee and Rockefeller had an amiable relationship. The governor in 2004 appeared to brand Rockefeller as his heir apparent when he said voters should vote a GOP ticket in 2006.

''I think people will say, 'It was a Republican governor who opened health care and the different highway programs; it was a Republican governor who pushed for increased standards in our schools,''' Huckabee said then.

But that was before former Homeland Security Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson entered the governor's race. With two Republicans on the ballot, Huckabee was careful not to lean either way.

Rockefeller was the son of former Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, who was elected to two-year terms in 1966 and 1968. The father died in 1973 at age 60 of cancer.

The lieutenant governor, a Republican, entered politics in 1996. He won a special election to complete the unexpired term of Huckabee, who became governor July 15, 1996, after Jim Guy Tucker was convicted in a fraud case as part of the Whitewater investigation.

Rockefeller won re-election twice, winning 67 percent of the vote in 1998 and 60 percent in 2002. As lieutenant governor, Rockefeller presided over the state Senate and served as governor when Huckabee was out of the state.

Under the state's term-limits law, he could not serve again as lieutenant governor. He announced his candidacy for governor last year but withdrew July 19, 2005, after the blood disorder was diagnosed.

Before withdrawing, he had said he wouldn't rely on his fortune to purchase the office.

''I don't think the governor's office is there to be bought by anybody. Nobody is ordained or destined to be governor. A person has to earn the right to serve,'' he said in February 2005.

As lieutenant governor, he served as an economic cheerleader for the state, traveling at his own expense to seek foreign investments here.

After his father's death, Rockefeller bought Winrock Farms Inc., founded by his father in 1953, and became involved in banking, retailing, automobile dealerships and resorts.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. and a former Arkansas first lady, noted Rockefeller's ''extraordinary public service'' during and prior to his terms as lieutenant governor.

''He was a friend of mine, and he will be missed,'' said Clinton, visiting Arkansas over the weekend to raise money for Arkansas' Federation of Democratic Women, to visit her husband's presidential library and to visit friends.

He was a member of the Arkansas State Police Commission from 1981 to 1995 and was chairman of the President's Council on Rural America after his appointment to the council in 1991 by the first President Bush.

Rockefeller supported literacy councils and in 1997 created the Books in the Attic program, in which Boy Scouts collect used books to distribute to families. With two children with Down syndrome, Rockefeller and his second wife, Lisenne, started what is now the Academy at Riverdale, a school for children with learning disabilities.

Rockefeller also founded The Billfish Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting marlins, swordfish and other billfish. As a National Rifle Association member, he sponsored Project ChildSafe to distribute free trigger locks in the state.

He also served on the Boy Scouts' national board of directors and was president of the Scouts' local Quapaw Area Council. He was on the national boards of Ducks Unlimited and The Nature Conservancy, and on the boards of the Arkansas Cancer Research Center and the Arkansas Arts Center Foundation.

Born Sept. 17, 1948, in New York, Rockefeller was the only child of Winthrop Rockefeller and Barbara ''Bobo'' Sears, the daughter of an immigrant Lithuanian coal miner. An uncle was former vice president Nelson Rockefeller, and current U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., is a cousin.

Rockefeller attended Pembroke College at the University of Oxford and graduated from the ranch management program at Texas Christian University. Rockefeller had homes at Winrock Farms in Conway County and in Little Rock. He had eight children.
Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press