James Stillman Rockefeller, banker and Olympic oarsman, was born on June 8, 1902. He died on August 10, 2004, aged 102.
James Stillman Rockefeller served for eight years as chairman of First National City Bank of New York, which later became Citigroup. His proudest achievement, however, always remained the gold medal he won at the Olympic Games in 1924.
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Rockefeller was captain and stroke of the United States coxed eight in Paris, where they beat the Canadian team by 16 seconds. He eventually became America’s oldest living Olympic medallist.
Born in New York City in 1902, he was the grandson of William Rockefeller and the grandnephew of John D. Rockefeller, the founders of Standard Oil. Such was the success of the company that the Rockefeller name became a byword for limitless wealth and was dropped in the lyrics of such standards as On the Sunny Side of the Street.
He attended Taft School and Brunswick Lower School before completing his education at Yale.
There, he captained the university’s eight to victory over their great rivals from Harvard. He and his fellow oarsman, who included the paediatrician and writer Benjamin Spock, thus won the right to represent the United States in Paris.
After winning the gold, Rockefeller featured on the cover of Time magazine for July 24, 1924. He later kept his oars from the Yale race and the Olympic final on display at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.
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Rockefeller spent six years with the Wall Street banking firm Brown Brothers, before joining National City Bank, where both his maternal grandfather and uncle had previously been president. During the Second World War he served with the US Airborne Command and Airborne Centre as assistant chief of staff. At the time of his discharge in 1945, he was a lieutenant-colonel in the General Staff Corps.
He became president of National City Bank in 1952. Three years later, he led it into a merger with First National Bank of New York to form First National City Bank. He served as chairman from 1959 to 1967, driving the bank through a programme of overseas expansion. Under Rockefeller’s successor and protégé, Walter B. Wriston, First National City was renamed Citigroup and emerged as the world’s largest financial conglomerate.
Rockefeller served on the boards of American Smelting and Refining, Kimberley-Clark, Monsanto, National Cash Register, Northern Pacific Railroad and Pan American World Airways. He remained until his death a director of such family concerns as Cranston Print Works and the Indian Spring Land Company. He was a trustee of the American Museum of Natural History and a member of the board of overseers of New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Addicted to a regimented lifestyle — breakfast at 8am, lunch at 1pm, cocktails at 6pm and dinner promptly at 7pm — Rockefeller preferred plain food, without sauces or cheese, and always ate plenty of fresh vegetables. He drove a car until his last year and enjoyed good health until shortly before his death.
James Stillman Rockefeller married Nancy Carnegie in 1926. The granddaughter of the Scottish-born steel baron and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, she died in 1994. Rockefeller is survived by two sons and two daughters.
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Paul Garner, comedian, was born on July 31, 1909. He died on August 8, 2004, aged 95.
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A legendary American vaudeville comic, Paul Garner was the last surviving member of the Three Stooges comedy act. Garner appeared on stage as the “Third Stooge” opposite Moe Howard and Larry Fine, when the team’s orginal member, Shemp Howard, was unable to perform. He appeared in teamings with nine different Stooge partners, culminating in the 1970s with Curly Joe DeRita and Frank Mitchell in what became the last incarnation of the Three Stooges.
The Washington-born Garner began performing in vaudeville as a child singing, dancing and imitating Al Jolson. He earned the nickname “Mousie” by perfecting the stage persona of a simpering joker with a penchant for shyness.
He entertained soldiers during the First World War and in the 1920s and 1930s became one of vaudeville’s biggest acts. He served in the US Army during the Second World War and participated in the Allied Forces North African Campaign and was awarded a Purple Heart.
Later he co-starred with Olsen and Johson’s famous touring revue Helzapoppin. In addition to vaudeville Garner appeared as one of the Three Stooges on Broadway, in feature films and documentaries. He also wrote several books about his life and career with the Three Stooges.
Garner made numerous guest appearances on television shows such as The Monkees, The Munsters and I Dream Of Jeannie and also formed the Rollicking Mousie Garner Trio, in which he was known for getting smashed over the head with breakable ukuleles. He is represented twice on the Hollywood “Walk of Fame”, with one star for the Three Stooges and the other for his association with the musical parodists Spike Jones and his City Slickers.