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Megan Marshack, aide with Nelson Rockefeller on fatal night, dies at 70
Megan Marshack, aide with Nelson Rockefeller on fatal night, dies at 70
Despite intense speculation over her relationship with the former vice president after he died of a heart attack in 1979, Ms. Marshack never revealed details.
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{I'm all out.}
Megan Marshack in 1976. (AP)
By Brian Murphy
October 17, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. EDT
In a quivering voice, a woman gave a 911 dispatcher the address of a townhouse on West 54th Street in Manhattan. “It’s death. It’s immediate, please. … It’s a dying patient,” the woman said late on a Friday night in January 1979. ... The stricken man was one of the city’s most prominent residents, former vice president and four-term New York state governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. At the scene was a 25-year-old aide named Megan Marshack, who had joined the Rockefeller staff three years earlier in Washington.
Rockefeller was later pronounced dead of a heart attack. And Ms. Marshack became the central figure in a flurry of speculation over Rockefeller’s final hours and the nature of the relationship between the aspiring journalist and a patriarch from one of the country’s most powerful families.
Ms. Marshack, who died Oct. 2 in Sacramento at 70, kept her side of story tightly held for more than four decades as guardian of a mysterious footnote in American politics. Her silence, however, also left room for conjecture in books, articles and pop culture over whether she and the married Rockefeller were romantically involved. ... “Because of the discrepancies and tangled accounts of the circumstances surrounding his fatal heart attack, she has been forever labeled The Woman Who Was There,” The Washington Post noted in a profile of Ms. Marshack about two weeks after Rockefeller’s death.
In a self-written obituary, which appeared on a funeral home website, Ms. Marshack noted that she was “associated around the world with the death” of Rockefeller, but she did not shed additional light on the rumors of an intimate relationship. She ended the obituary on an enigmatic note, quoting from the song “What I Did for Love” in the Broadway musical “A Chorus Line” — “won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”
{snip}
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, left, during his first working session with President Gerald Ford on Dec. 30, 1974. (AFP/Getty Images)
{snip}
Share
{I'm all out.}
By Brian Murphy
Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. Murphy has reported from more than 50 countries and has written four books.follow on X @BrianFMurphy
Despite intense speculation over her relationship with the former vice president after he died of a heart attack in 1979, Ms. Marshack never revealed details.
Share
{I'm all out.}
Megan Marshack in 1976. (AP)
By Brian Murphy
October 17, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. EDT
In a quivering voice, a woman gave a 911 dispatcher the address of a townhouse on West 54th Street in Manhattan. “It’s death. It’s immediate, please. … It’s a dying patient,” the woman said late on a Friday night in January 1979. ... The stricken man was one of the city’s most prominent residents, former vice president and four-term New York state governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. At the scene was a 25-year-old aide named Megan Marshack, who had joined the Rockefeller staff three years earlier in Washington.
Rockefeller was later pronounced dead of a heart attack. And Ms. Marshack became the central figure in a flurry of speculation over Rockefeller’s final hours and the nature of the relationship between the aspiring journalist and a patriarch from one of the country’s most powerful families.
Ms. Marshack, who died Oct. 2 in Sacramento at 70, kept her side of story tightly held for more than four decades as guardian of a mysterious footnote in American politics. Her silence, however, also left room for conjecture in books, articles and pop culture over whether she and the married Rockefeller were romantically involved. ... “Because of the discrepancies and tangled accounts of the circumstances surrounding his fatal heart attack, she has been forever labeled The Woman Who Was There,” The Washington Post noted in a profile of Ms. Marshack about two weeks after Rockefeller’s death.
In a self-written obituary, which appeared on a funeral home website, Ms. Marshack noted that she was “associated around the world with the death” of Rockefeller, but she did not shed additional light on the rumors of an intimate relationship. She ended the obituary on an enigmatic note, quoting from the song “What I Did for Love” in the Broadway musical “A Chorus Line” — “won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”
{snip}
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, left, during his first working session with President Gerald Ford on Dec. 30, 1974. (AFP/Getty Images)
{snip}
Share
{I'm all out.}
By Brian Murphy
Brian Murphy joined The Washington Post after more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief for the Associated Press in Europe and the Middle East. Murphy has reported from more than 50 countries and has written four books.follow on X @BrianFMurphy