Stop 6: Midpoint Butterfly Garden

The Rockefeller siblings were all raised to believe in philanthropy. Together they would found the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which was essentially a combined checkbook that provided the collective philanthropy to support their special responsibility toward making the world a little bit better place in which to live, as their parents had taught them (photo 1).

Winthrop had a different perspective on life than his siblings. Winthrop had a connection to “the common man” that seemed to begin early in his life, something many credit to his mother.

Rather than pursue a career as an executive in the family business as might have been expected of him, he opted instead to do things his own way and learn the oil business from “the ground up.” Winthrop’s first experience in the production side of the oil business was when he took a position with the Humble Oil Company in Texas (photo 2). Winthrop, or “Rock” as the men would call him, began work in the oilfields in the summer of 1933, working first as a roustabout and later as a roughneck working on the drills.

In “A Letter to My Son,” Winthrop writes extensively about his relationships with the men in the oil fields, how they didn’t trust him at first but that soon changed when they learned that he would work as hard as they did, that he didn’t mind getting dirty, and that he treated them all as equals (photo 3).

“I wanted to live on what I could earn, rather than on my last name."

And “Rock” was successful in not only earning a living with his hands, but also earning the respect of his fellow workers with the sweat of his brow and determination.