Natalie Hunter Rockefeller
Natalie Rockefeller married into a benevolent family. She sits on boards of two charities and is among the next generation of philanthropists.
Natalie Rockefeller was not a professional dancer. But she and others took the stage at the 2015 Dancing With Our Stars Gala in a Little Rock ballroom to raise money for the treatment of neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder usually diagnosed in children.
Rockefeller had heard about Myleigh, a little south Arkansas girl who had it, and she wanted to meet her.
Up walked a 5-year-old in a blue dress. She reminded Rockefeller of a little princess.
You couldn’t see the tumors growing under the child’s skin. Myleigh hugged Rockefeller and thanked her for her efforts on behalf of The Children’s Tumor Foundation. The child’s gratitude, Rockefeller felt, was genuine.
“She was just beautiful. Even now, her sincerity brings tears to my eyes,” Rockefeller says. “I just couldn’t imagine what her parents were going through. I was a new mother myself. I kept seeing this little girl’s face and thinking, ‘What would I do if I were her mom?’”
Myleigh would, for Rockefeller, be the face for what has become a several-years effort to help get a place in Arkansas where those with neurofibromatosis could get treated by a specialist after they became adults. No one would have to travel out of state.
Neurofibromatosis, or NF, is a rare genetic disorder where a person develops benign tumors below the surface of their skin. The tumors attach to nerve tissue and are painful to the touch. It’s inoperable and there is no cure.
The Children’s Tumor Foundation is one of two charities where Rockefeller sits on the board of directors. The other is the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, a research and treatment center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences that has been a major beneficiary of Rockefeller family philanthropy and is named for her late father-in-law, who died of cancer at age 57.
Rockefeller, 40, is married to Winthrop Paul “Win” Rockefeller Jr. — great-greatgrandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller; grandson of former Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller; and son and namesake of the late Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller.
Like the four generations of Rockefellers that came before, she and her husband are intent on using their family’s resources to help promote a culture of philanthropy. They are considered at the forefront of the next generation of Little Rock philanthropists backing good works that show tangible results.
Current efforts are being conducted amid a coronavirus pandemic that has turned traditional fundraising on its head and forced smaller nonprofits like many of the ones the Rockefellers back to find new ways to stay relevant.
“We have to be creative or these nonprofits won’t work,” Rockefeller says, calling it “thinking outside the box.”
“Sometimes I have crazy ideas that don’t work, but sometimes I come up with something that will work,” she says. “There’s a way to be involved and still get to be home. We’ve done it for a year and a half and it’s worked.”
FARMER’S DAUGHTER
Natalie Hunter was raised in New Madrid, Mo., situated along the Mississippi River in Missouri’s Bootheel. Her mother is director of the port authority there. Her father farms thousands of acres, mainly corn and cotton, and is a partner in a co-op.
The name Rockefeller epitomizes wealth, privilege and an old political dynasty — including a vice president and multiple senators and governors, almost all Republicans and living in the East.
Natalie Rockefeller comes from a family that has been involved in Democratic Party politics in Missouri for four generations. Her great-grandmother got involved
before women could vote. Her grandfather was a county prosecutor for more than 20 years. An uncle is chairman of his county Democratic Party. Natalie was a delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Committee when she was 23.
She wanted to go to college with friends at Mississippi State University, but with two lean years in the farming business, she stayed close to home: Arkansas State University, where she majored in communications.
After graduation in 2003, she worked on a congressional campaign in Little Rock before getting a job in the Arkansas House of Representatives. She’d eventually wind up back home in Missouri, buying a house down the road from where she grew up and working in the credit department of a seed and chemical company.
She’d met Win Rockefeller five years earlier at a gym in Little Rock, where a trainer introduced them. They dated briefly, but his father had recently died and Rockefeller wasn’t ready to get serious. They kept in touch and reconnected when she asked him about his New Year’s plans. They married a year later, on New Year’s Eve 2011.
PHILANTHROPY
With the Rockefeller name comes a family mantra that goes back five generations: philanthropy.
In addition to the two organizations where she’s a board member, Rockefeller and her husband have had smaller roles on behalf of Easterseals, the arts, and women and children, including resources for survivors of family violence.
Her challenge is to say no to worthy causes because something else is deemed more worthy. Rockefeller has a “strict, two-board-at-a-time rule.”
“I’m a mother and a wife first, so I’ve just learned to say no,” Rockefeller says from her home on 16 acres west of Little Rock. “I can’t give it the attention it needs and be the mother and wife I need to be.”
Motherhood came in 2013, when she was in her early 30s: Twin boys, delivered eight weeks premature after an emergency Cesarean section. One would spend 38 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at UAMS in Little Rock, the other, 51 days. Becoming a mother was, she says, the defining moment of her life.
“I was rushed into emergency delivery. That moment when they said, ‘We are going to have to put you to sleep,’ was a little unnerving. What would happen when I woke up?” she says. “When they rolled the babies in and I could touch their
“When they rolled the babies in and I could touch their blankets, it was emotional. Nothing would ever be the same. Win and I would not be the priority; now it’s the four of us.”
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette/Thomas Metthe)
blankets, it was emotional. Nothing would ever be the same. Win and I would not be the priority; now it’s the four of us.”
Rockefeller describes her husband and herself as “very private” about their sons, now 8 years old. They have not had a professional picture taken and they post no pictures of their sons on social media. Win Rockefeller was a teenager before his picture was taken and bodyguards had accompanied him to elementary school because his father was on somebody’s hit list.
And like their father, fraternal twins Winthrop Paul Rockefeller III and Jackson Craig Rockefeller will one day be expected to fulfill the family duty of philanthropy.
Their mother says they have already started: When she and her sons made kidtheme masks to wear to the doctor’s office last year, one suggested making more and selling them to raise money for the cancer institute. She says they posted them on Facebook and have raised almost $10,000 from contributors in 15 states.
“They have an obligation to give back,” Rockefeller says of her sons. “I think that comes naturally; they see the things we do.”
The Rockefellers will chair a Sept. 8 telethon to raise money for the family’s biggest benefactor: UAMS’ Rockefeller Cancer Institute. It will be broadcast at different times throughout the day by three TV stations around Arkansas. Last year’s telethon, which Rockefeller says raised more than $450,000, was conducted after the scheduled in-person gala had to be canceled because of the pandemic. Rockefeller says when the idea of a telethon was raised last year, it was met with surprise by some.
Tiffany Robinson and her husband, Daniel, are active in philanthropy with the Rockefellers. She agrees with Rockefeller that previous leaders did well — but in the new era of pandemic and its variants, they have to look at ways to do things differently.
“You’ve got to know when to pivot,” Tiffany Robinson says. “She knows there’s much work to be done in the community. She wants to roll up her sleeves, get involved and make it happen.
“Philanthropy is as important to her as it is to Win. That’s part of them being the perfect match,” Robinson says.
An economist who has written about nonprofits said he’s not surprised philanthropy is continuing five generations on from the Rockefellers’ patriarch.
“The name is synonymous with wealth, but it’s also synonymous with giving wealth away,” says David Hoaas, professor of economics at Centenary College. “There’s a family tradition of tying their dollars to the medical community. Even if generations before had not contracted cancer, the family would still be giving to philanthropy.”
MYLEIGH
Perhaps no other child outside her immediate family tugs at Natalie Rockefeller’s heart more than Myleigh, who’s starting middle school this year.
Arkansas Children’s Hospital treats children with NF. But when they reach 18 they have to seek treatment elsewhere. There are 1,000 people in Arkansas with NF, and three out of four are adults. Complications from the disease can include hearing loss, headaches, cognitive and cardiovascular problems. Girls can need mammograms earlier. Some adults can’t live alone.
Advocates of an adult clinic in Arkansas have succeeded in getting one doctor who sees adult patients once a week at the Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Rockefeller says. It has been a slow process and has involved working with the national organization that advocates for NF patients, she says.
Rockefeller will step down from the Children’s Tumor Foundation board after this year. By then, she hopes the clinic will be in full operation.
“You don’t need an entire wing (of a medical facility) — just a couple of doctors who can treat, follow and advocate for them,” she says.
Rockefeller says she will always be Myleigh’s champion.
“I’ve had the chance to see this little girl grow up,” she says. “Every time I’ve been involved in a conversation about the need for an adult NF clinic, Myleigh’s face comes to mind. Now she will have the absolute best care when she’s an adult living with NF.”