It was his Peace Corps friend Charlie Peters, a Charleston native, who urged Jay Rockefeller to go West Virginia
He touched them;
they defined him
Senator says work with town
defines who he is today
Karin Fischer
Daily Mail Washington bureau
Wednesday June 23, 2004
WASHINGTON -- The notebooks sit on a shelf in Sen. Jay Rockefeller's study, 500 single-spaced pages inexpertly banged out on an Olivetti typewriter by a 27-year-old consumed by his work as an anti-poverty volunteer in a town called Emmons.
Rockefeller said he felt compelled to record his feelings and observations as a VISTA volunteer in the small mining community on the Kanawha-Boone County line, often writing late into the night.
But in 40 years, he never has once read his notes. It's almost too personal, he says.
"It defines me," he says quietly and touches his chest. "It's always in here."
* * *
John D. Rockefeller IV came to West Virginia four decades ago this year, and never left.
The scion of one of the country's most famous families, the young Rockefeller had enjoyed a decidedly internationalist career. He took three years off from Harvard University to immerse himself in the study of Japanese language in Tokyo before joining the Kennedy administration and the fledgling Peace Corps. He also spent two years at the State Department.
What he did not know about, Rockefeller concedes, was his own country.
It was his Peace Corps friend Charlie Peters, a Charleston native, who urged him to go West Virginia.
"It was the beginning of the stirrings of the war on poverty, and he wanted to know about the problems of the country," Peters, the founder and longtime editor of the Washington Monthly, recalls. "I said, ‘Well, we've got them all in West Virginia.' "
And that was how Rockefeller ended up sitting on the railroad tracks, surrounded by Kanawha County's lush hills, talking to a bunch of children.
