Photo: Sgt. Kyle Fisch / U.S. Army
Jay Rockefeller, the former West Virginia governor and five-term U.S. senator whose work in Washington focused on health care, children and coal miners, died Friday at his home in Washington, D.C., The Washington Post reported. He was 89. His family did not provide a cause of death, the newspaper said.
A Democrat, Rockefeller served two terms as West Virginia governor from 1977 to 1985 before spending 30 years in the Senate. He won his first Senate election in 1984 and was reelected four times, retiring in 2015, according to his congressional biography.
He chaired the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Veterans’ Affairs Committee at different points in his career.
Rockefeller helped develop the Children’s Health Insurance Program and worked to expand health coverage, protect Medicare and improve care for veterans, according to the West Virginia University archive that holds his Senate papers. The program, known as CHIP, provides health insurance for children in families with limited incomes.
His work also included protecting health benefits for retired coal miners, their widows and dependents through the 1992 Coal Act, and backing mine-safety legislation after the Sago and Aracoma disasters in 2006, the archive says.
A great-grandson of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, he came to West Virginia in 1964 as a VISTA volunteer in the mining community of Emmons. That experience preceded his service in the state legislature, as secretary of state and as governor.
JBizNews Desk | Washington
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