Lunch with Friends is more than a modern version of a Horatio Alger story. A young man from a small town in Illinois graduated from a little known college in the Midwest, left for the big city to seek his fortune, and fell in love with a young woman from a socially prominent family from St. Louis. According to a member of the Jays, he “married up.” His career began by going door-to-door peddling pots and pans on the streets of Galesburg, Illinois, to selling bonds, first in Milwaukee and later in New York, to those with fortunes to invest.
J.P. Morgan
Why Central Illinois Needs to Learn about Nelson Dean Jay
I wrote Rockefeller, telling him about my research, asking whether he ever knew Jay, whether the research was worth the effort. Rockefeller did. He sent me a list of the occasions when they had lunch, or cocktails, or dinner. As to the value of the search, Rockefeller said, “Dean Jay is important, if for no other reason, because he was one of the ten Americans to be invited to the first Bilderberg Conference.”
Stories From Small Town Illinois 