In 1909 Rockefeller combined his special interest in the South and his interest in public health with the creation of the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease. Its purpose was "to bring about a cooperative movement of the medical profession, public health officials, boards of trade, churches, schools, the press, and other agencies for the cure and prevention of hookworm disease," which was especially devastating in the South. From its headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Sanitary Commission launched a massive campaign of public education and medication in eleven Southern states. It paid the salaries of field personnel, who were appointed jointly by the states and the Commission, and sponsored public education campaigns and the treatment of infected persons. As part of this program, more than 25,000 public meetings were attended by more than 2 million people who were given the facts about hookworm and its prevention. So successful was its work that a new agency was created as part of a new Rockefeller philanthropy to expand the work to other countries and to attack other diseases both in the South and abroad.
The Rockefeller foundation
In 1913 Rockefeller established the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) to "promote the well-being of mankind throughout the world." In keeping with this broad commitment, the Foundation through the years has given important assistance to public health, medical education, increasing food production, scientific advancement, social research, the arts, and other fields all over the world. The Foundation's International Health Division expanded the work of the Sanitary Commission worldwide, working against various diseases in fifty-two countries on six continents and twenty-nine islands, bringing international recognition of the need for public health and environmental sanitation. Its early field research on hookworm, malaria and yellow fever provided the basic techniques to control these diseases and established the pattern of modern public health services. The RF built and endowed the world's first School of Hygiene and Public Health, at The Johns Hopkins University, and then spent over $25 million in developing public health schools in the U.S. and in twenty-one foreign countries. Its agricultural development program in Mexico led to what has been called the Green Revolution in the advancement of food production around the world; and the RF provided significant funding for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. Thousands of scientists and scholars from all over the world have received RF fellowships and scholarships for advanced study. The foundation helped to found the Social Science Research Council and has provided significant support for such organizations as the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, and Russian Institute at Columbia University. In the arts the RF has helped establish or support the Stratford Shakespearean Festival in Ontario, Canada, and the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut; Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.; Karamu House in Cleveland; and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.
Other Rockefeller philanthropic support
In addition to creating these corporate philanthropies, Rockefeller continued to make personal donations. Among others whose activities received his financial support were various colleges and universities, including Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Spelman, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Vassar; theological schools; the Palisades Interstate Park Commission; San Francisco Earthquake victims; the Anti-Saloon League; Rockefeller Park and other parks in Cleveland; Baptist missionary organizations; and various YMCAs and YWCAs.
Family life
John D. Rockefeller and Laura C. Spelman (1839-1915), a teacher, were married on September 8, 1864, in Cleveland. The Rockefellers had five children -- four daughters and a son, John D., Jr. (1874-1960), who inherited much of the family fortune and continued his father's philanthropic work. Their eldest daughter, Bessie (1866-1906), married Charles Strong. Their second daughter, Alice (1869-1870), died in infancy. Alta (1871-1962) married E. Parmalee Prentice, and the youngest daughter, Edith (1872-1932), married Harold Fowler McCormick.
In the 1870s Rockefeller began to make business trips from Cleveland to New York. After a time he started bringing along his family for lengthy stays and, in 1884, he bought a large brownstone house at 4 West 54th Street, the land of which is now part of the garden of the Museum of Modern Art. Beginning in the 1890s, the family spent part of their time at Pocantico Hills, about 25 miles north of New York. For a number of years the Rockefellers returned during the summer to their Forest Hill home in East Cleveland. As he grew older, Rockefeller spent several months each year at his country homes in Lakewood, New Jersey, and Ormond Beach, Florida. Rockefeller died on the morning of May 23, 1937, at The Casements, his home in Ormond Beach. He was 97 years old. He is buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Cleveland.