April 18, 1960

The Hon. Nelson Rockefeller, Governor of the State of New York, and father of Mary Rockefeller ’60, spoke on “Survival in a Nuclear Attack.” Asked to speak by a group of concerned students, Rockefeller spoke about nuclear fall-out and the need for a program to promote private construction of shelters to protect families in case of a nuclear attack.

Rockefeller’s plan to encourage voluntary construction of nuclear fall-out shelters was roundly mocked and defeated in the New York Legislature, and he warned his Vassar audience that, given the Soviet nuclear power, “at some point the American people are going to question…whether Berlin is worth the risk to us as a people who are exposed to such an attack and have no defense against it and no place to go.”

The New York Times, The Miscellany News