James S. Rockefeller Jr., 1926–2025

By Genevieve Morgan

When I heard that Jim had slipped the mortal coil, flying free at last, I was surprised by how hard it hit me. As his editor, I was not close enough to him to call him by his familiar nickname (Pebble) or meet any of his family except his wife Marilyn and their pack of rowdy, delightful canines who met me at the door of their home with a variety of barks, growls, and yips. I grew to know the way up to his house by heart, because we always had our editorial meetings there, at his kitchen table, sharing a chicken salad sandwich and bowls of Campbell’s tomato soup, but I was never “at home” there. I had a job to do. We had a story to tell and a lifetime of adventure, pain, joy, love found and lost and found again to parse and turn into a well-honed package of prose. And Jim could be all business, except when he wasn’t, and he would stop and show me a memento from his travels or teach me a chess move or spin tops on the table to get me over feeling too shy to eat my sandwich in front of him. But somehow, during the year of the editorial work on his memoir, Wayfarer, he grew in my heart, as he has in the hearts of so many who have read his book, and became an eternal fixture: a scalawag and a gentleman; a lovestruck Romeo and a dutiful father; a rebel and a pillar of his community; a pilot and a wanderer; a fearless explorer and a cozy homebody.

It seemed to me that he would live forever, and that 100 years could never be enough to hold the immensity of his curiosity. I still don’t. And I am so grateful that Wayfarer contains some of his wisdom and delight, if only a small portion, and within its pages one can find the deep humanity and love of being alive that flowed through his veins. Jim was born to another time, and to immense wealth and the freedom that gave him, but he never wasted it or sneered at it or others because of it. He shared it, and himself, as graciously and simply as he shared his chicken salad sandwich with me. At his book launch, he could barely be convinced to take center stage, and instead asked many of us there to come up and tell our stories, and in his indomitable way, cast a spell, magically turning four square walls and industrial lighting into a wooded grove lit by a metaphorical campfire. He found each of us a space to sit for a spell, get warm, and speak a story or sing a song into the starry night.

Jim Rockefeller was a giant among us. He lived and loved and wrote with an earnest abandon, and I will never forget the time I got to have in the presence of such a wondrous and wonderful soul. When I look up at the night sky, I will think of him and his tales of his time in Norway, and Polaris, the North star, favorite star of all sea-farers. I will imagine him sailing along the glittering oceans of eternity, reunited with those he loved and lost. I will be grateful for the hours we spent together in the warmth of a winter sun and his infectious enthusiasm for life.

See Jim's obituary in the BDN.