The Right Places (10 page)

Inwardly, Jay Rockefeller still felt restless, unfulfilled. At one point, after meeting Maxwell Taylor and hearing about the Green Berets, Jay Rockefeller excitedly proposed to his friend and fellow Peace Corpsman Ray La Montaigne that they should both—since they had
never been in the service—join the Marines. Both men marched down to the recruiting office to enlist, where they were promptly informed that La Montaigne, at twenty-seven, was too old, and that Jay Rockefeller, at six feet six inches, was too tall.

It was another friend of Jay's—Charlie Peters, now editor of the
Washington Monthly
—who first directed Jay's attention to West Virginia. Peters, who admits that he is a frustrated politician and would himself have liked to run for governor of his native state (“But I didn't have the money”), was an active worker in both the John and Bobby Kennedy campaigns. Peters had made Jay Rockefeller the godfather of his son, and had said to him, in effect, “If you ever want to go into politics, start in West Virginia because if you can accomplish anything in West Virginia you can do it anywhere.” At that point, Jay Rockefeller's knowledge of West Virginia had been, like his father's, pretty much limited to the luxurious confines of the Greenbrier. He had never been treated to the desolate reaches of the northwestern part of the state, around such Appalachian communities as Morgantown. At Charlie Peters's suggestion, Jay Rockefeller took an aerial tour of West Virginia, where, among other shocks and surprises, he first witnessed the rape that has been committed upon much of the state by strip-mining.

Strip-mining is the cheapest and hence the most profitable—but not the only—way to extract coal from the West Virginia hills. Literally whole tops and sides of mountains are plowed aside by bulldozers to open up the coal veins. Once the coal has been removed, the slashes are abandoned. Strip-mining requires no particular engineering skill, and practically anybody capable of driving a tractor can do it. Leases to strip-mine from local property owners, who don't understand much about leases to begin with, are easily and cheaply obtained. The physical results to the countryside are, in the meantime, irreparable. Rains falling on the exposed mountainsides create mudslides that descend to clog and pollute the rivers. Attempts to reforest the stripped regions have proved failures; not enough soil is left for a tree to put down roots. As one ecologist succinctly put it, “It's a tough job to try to rebuild a mountain.” The disastrous flood of early 1972 was not a direct result of strip-mining, but it dramatized the haste and
ruthlessness, and lack of foresight, with which men have gone after coal in West Virginia.

Land after it has been strip-mined is virtually without value, and what has happened to much of West Virginia is that it has simply been lost beyond reclaiming. The idea of saving what was left of West Virginia immediately appealed to Jay Rockefeller's crusading spirit. This was in 1964, and Jay Rockefeller's first job in the state was with an antipoverty program called Action for Appalachian Youth, where he was assigned to remote Emmons County.

“One of the first things I discovered down here,” Jay Rockefeller says, “is that there are two things rural West Virginia people really get excited about—high school sports and local politics.” Democrats are in the majority in the state—though that doesn't mean the Democrats will always vote that way—and so Jay Rockefeller turned his back on his family's Republican tradition and became a Democrat. He also became a high school sports fan, and in his political campaigns—first for the West Virginia House of Delegates, next for secretary of state, then for governor—he has been known to take in as many as two high school basketball games an evening. At these games he appears, stands up, waves, and gets cheered (and of course sometimes booed), and makes a little joke about his height and the advantage it gives him in getting a ball into a basket.

One of the girls Jay Rockefeller had been more or less steadily dating was Sharon Percy, seven years younger than he and the daughter of a Republican senator. When Sharon Percy's twin sister, Valerie, was brutally murdered in a still-unsolved crime—while Sharon slept in the bedroom next door—Jay Rockefeller hurried to Sharon's side. His support during and after this tragedy is really what brought them together, and they were married in the spring of 1967. Sharon moved to West Virginia, became a Democrat, and began helping her husband stuff envelopes, lick stamps, and tack up posters on rural telephone poles.

The young Rockefellers' life style in West Virginia has been simple, folksy, and old-shoe. Both Rockefellers insist that they live simply by preference, and not for political reasons. Though beautiful and wealthy, both Rockefellers bend over backward not to be ticked
off as rich snobs. They have made a few mistakes. As any other young society girl might do upon moving to a new city, Sharon Rockefeller joined the Charleston Junior League, traditional meeting place for “nice” people. This drew some criticism and, at Jay's suggestion, Sharon now underplays her membership in the League (though she still maintains it). She has since preferred to concentrate her efforts on an organization called Mountain Artisans which recruits women from West Virginia hamlets and teaches them to stitch New York–bought fabrics into countrified quilts and pillows and patchwork quilts and bodices. Not long ago Sharon Rockefeller brought a fashion show of mountain-made clothes to Bonwit Teller's in New York, where a number of Manhattan's so-called Beautiful People snapped them up eagerly. (“Just think, they're made by genuine poor people!” one woman cooed.) Mountain Artisans boutiques have been set up in other stores in other cities.

The young Rockefellers' life style has been called phony. “They're just like two little plastic people,” one acquaintance says, “little windup Judy dolls programmed to turn on with their simplicity and sweetness whenever you push a button. It's just done to get votes.” Well, perhaps, but so far it has appeared to work, and what is the point of being in politics if not to get votes? The Rockefellers' house is in the fashionable Loudon Heights section of Charleston, and is a traditional ranch-style affair. Originally it had only two bedrooms. (Again, the contrast with the Kennedy style is a marked one; Bobby Kennedy, when he moved to New York to run for the Senate, established himself in a posh apartment in the United Nations Plaza, probably the most expensive address in Manhattan.) Since his marriage, Jay Rockefeller's house has grown somewhat larger. “I've kept adding on,” he explains. “When I bought it, I didn't expect to get married, and when I got married I didn't expect to have two children.” But the Rockefellers are quick to point out that their house in Loudon Heights is surrounded by many houses that are larger and more grand. Though comfortably staffed (two maids) and decorated (by Mrs. Henry “Sister” Parrish), breakfast is in the kitchen with Sharon serving cornflakes out of a box. When the Rockefellers entertain, it is nearly always political (“We really never do any social entertaining at all,” Sharon says), and inevitably informal. Sharon Rockefeller herself is a fair
cook—her thick broccoli soup is a house favorite—and luncheons by the backyard pool usually consist of her soup and plates of homemade sandwiches, served with pitchers of lemonade and beer.

Even more wary of the political stigma that might be attached to his money and name (“I honestly don't think the name Rockefeller means that much down here”), Jay Rockefeller is concerned lest he be branded a Northern carpetbagger, using West Virginia merely as a stepping-stone to something bigger—namely Washington, D.C. For this reason he turned down a chance to run for the United States Senate from West Virginia, and chose the governorship as his target instead, promising, if elected, to serve two full terms, or the most that the state law allows. “I don't want that New York image,” he says frankly. Both Rockefellers have been beseeched to appear on such talk shows as Dick Cavett's and David Frost's, but have refused “because I'm not running for a
national
office; I'm running for a
West Virginia
office.” And, not long ago, a New York journalist was following one of the Rockefellers' exhausting campaigning trips through West Virginia (trips conducted in Chevy station wagons, not limousines). The journalist happened to be wearing a Bill Blass suit (slightly nipped waist, slightly flared trousers), and Gucci shoes. Jay Rockefeller suddenly turned to the journalist and said, “Look—don't take this personally, but would you mind not standing so close to me? I mean, you look just a little bit too New Yorky, if you know what I mean—and that could really hurt me here. It's what I'm trying to get
away
from, see?” Also, until recently, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller systematically turned down interviews from national magazines. Asked why the change of policy had come about, Sharon Rockefeller gave a disarmingly honest answer: “Well, perhaps if we're nice to reporters, they'll write nice things about us.” She may be right, because the Rockefellers quickly got an affectionate national press.

The crucial point in Jay Rockefeller's campaign for governor—and the point that he knew could cost or win him the election—was his dramatic stand against strip-mining. If elected, he promised, he would see to it that strip-mining was abolished. Strip-mining, meanwhile, was a political issue in West Virginia only depending on where you happened to be. That is, if one inveighs against strip-mining in a county where it's being heavily done, one may find oneself in heavy trouble.
In non-bituminous areas of the state, nobody could care less. Strip-mining is accomplished by bulldozing, and also by blasting, and in the latter area West Virginia's explosives industry has much at stake. A telling message on the marquee of a Boone County motel said recently: “
WELCOME STRIP-MINERS
—
THE WEST VIRGINIA EXPLOSIVE MANUFACTURERS ASSN
.” Explosives manufacturers, it may not be necessary to point out, know how to make bombs, and during the Rockefeller campaign there were threats and unsettling moments such as an incident when two hundred angry strip-miners pressed in on Jay Rockefeller at a meeting and it was necessary to employ a bodyguard to hold the crowd back. Jay Rockefeller himself remained cool.

Men such as Washington's Charlie Peters who have worked hard for Rockefeller behind the scenes were convinced that his stand on strip-mining would win him the election. “It took a lot of guts to come out against that,” Peters says, “and I think the people of West Virginia admire guts, and even those people who were profiting from strip mines privately admitted that what they were doing was ruining their state, making it unlivable. Deep well drilling does cost more, but it's still profitable, and it employs more people—which the state needs in order to get men off the relief rolls. Anyway, Jay has winning qualities that will take him a long way. He really likes meeting people, he likes being the center of the stage, and he gets a tremendous kick out of campaigning. Also, he has no impulses to be autocratic. I've never seen Jay be nasty. Bobby Kennedy could be nasty—shouting orders at people, telling them where to get off. But Jay is a persuader. He's more like Jack Kennedy than Bobby. I used to say that I'd never seen Jack Kennedy be nasty, but one afternoon one of Jack's aides said to me, ‘You've never seen Jack blow up? You should be upstairs in the suite right now.' And Jay has a great asset in Sharon. She's enthusiastic, and bright, and pretty. If you compare Jay with Ted Kennedy, you have to admit that in that respect Joan is
not
a political asset. Oh, Joan is pretty—but she's so shy and standoffish and ill at ease. Wherever she is, Joan Kennedy looks as though she wished she weren't there.”

Understandably, the greatest criticism leveled against the Rockefellers is that they are really not sincere about West Virginia, that they are using this forlorn state as a stepping-stone to some loftier position.
And Jay's and Sharon's glad-handing manner with the simple folk of the little towns has been called a practiced artifice. It is true that some of the things Jay Rockefeller says sound a bit manufactured. For example, to Mrs. Mitchell, proprietress of Mitchell's Esso Station, he inquired cheerily, “Who's your closest competition?” Mrs. Mitchell looked blank for a moment, and then said, “Don't got no competition.” “Say, that's just
great!
” beamed the young Standard Oil (Esso) heir whom the opposition had already begun calling “Jay-Bird.” At other times, though, his logic slips a gear and fails him, revealing his youth. At a gathering of school board officials, in Hamlin, West Virginia, Jay Rockefeller made a speech which included the puzzling statement, “I believe in spending money on educating children, which is what most children really are.” Well, it had been a long day.

He can, on the other hand, be fast with a quip. When a reporter asked him not long ago whether or not he would someday like to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Jay Rockefeller replied, “Route Ten doesn't go that far.” To which Sharon added, “And at the rate we're going we'll never make it.”

By those who consider themselves sophisticated politicians, Jay and Sharon Rockefeller have been labeled naïve and square. Perhaps they are—a bit. They hardly ever drink, don't smoke, and pop breath-sweetening lozenges into each other's mouths before each stop along a campaign route. In their car they carry packages of Oreo cookies for snacks and marshmallow-filled chocolate bars for quick energy, along with the boxes of campaign literature and buttons. When informed that ahead of them, in the sheriff's car that was leading their entourage, the sheriff and his men were amusing themselves listening to pornographic tapes on the car's tape deck, Sharon Rockefeller was shocked. “Why, I simply can't imagine such a thing!” she cried. Another Rockefeller aide was chatting casually about his personal trips with pot and LSD. “But don't ever mention that sort of thing in front of Jay and Sharon!” he warned. “I mean, man, they're
straight
.” And the Rockefellers seem sincerely to love what they are doing. When two-and-a-half-year-old Jamie (as John D. Rockefeller V is called) complained to his mother not long ago that she was never home, Sharon simply patted his head and said, “You'll just have to get used to it, that's all.” Also, the Rockefellers do seem genuinely to love their adopted state.
Perhaps for the simple reason that it is so totally unlike the palaces and playhouses in which they grew up.