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The Summum Bonum. When he entered Harvard, in 1932, David began to grow up socially. A friend remembers that "he was a pudgy 17, and every ambitious mother in Boston was pushing her daughter at him." At a dance during his freshman year, he met Peggy McGrath, the vivacious daughter of New York Lawyer F. Sims McGrath. Eight years later he married her, after a courtship consisting largely of dancing dates ("He is still the dreamiest waltzer in the world," says Peggy) and endless phone calls.
Harvard also aroused in him a desire to learn more about economics; so he signed up for graduate courses (among his classmates: Economist Paul Samuelson). Then he studied for a year at London's liberal (and Rockefeller-supported) School of Economics, and earned his doctorate at the Rockefeller-founded University of Chicago. He is thus the best schooled of all the Rockefellers—as well as the most intellectual by nature. In his thesis the young David struck the note that still underlies his liberal capitalistic philosophy: "The sutnmiim bonum is to be achieved through a maximum of individual freedom of action consistent with behavior which is not predatory or antisocial." Advice from Beyond. After winning his Ph.D., David sought education of a different kind, signed on as a dollar-a-year political "intern" on the staff of New York's fiery reform mayor, Fiorello La Guardia. The main accomplishment of his 18-month stint: suggesting that merchan dise display cases be set up at La Guardia Airport to increase city revenues, and using his formidable name to convince businessmen that they should lease space.
Early in wartime 1942, Rockefeller enlisted in the Army. His original idea was to serve unassumingly as an enlisted man, but noble resolve wore thin after a few months of sharing a barracks with a man who took care of the colonel's horses ("I couldn't breathe"); so David applied for officer's training. His fluent French got him a military-intelligence assignment in North Africa. After Paris was liberated, Captain Rockefeller was attached to the U.S. embassy to report on French political and economic developments. Another World War II veteran who served in the same organization recalls reporting for duty, determined to be unimpressed by the Rockefeller name; but his resistance melted when David met him at the airport and carried his suitcase to a waiting jeep. (To this day David makes a fetish of carrying other people's bags for them.) After his Army discharge, David, now 30, began wondering what career to follow. The decision had in fact been made ten years before during a weekend visit to the Ottawa home of an old Rockefeller family friend and adviser, Canada's late Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. King strongly advised David to follow his bent for economics and foreign affairs by becoming an international banker.* The bank was easy to choose: David's uncle, Winthrop Aldrich, had headed the Chase since the early 19305. In 1946 Rockefeller joined the Chase staff as assistant manager of the foreign department.