Governor of Rhode Island. He served as the 59th Governor of Rhode Island, but also known to be a member of a wealthy American family and for his years of philanthropy. He was the son of Alfred G. Vanderbilt I and Ellen Tuck along with being the great-great-grandson of "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, founder of the family's fortune. Educated at St. George's School in Rhode Island and for one year at Princeton University, he was appointed at age 15 to serve in the U.S. Naval Coast Defense Reserve during World War I, making him one of the youngest Americans to have served in the war. In 1922, at the age of 21, the then legal age of majority, he inherited a five-million-dollar trust fund, which he would increase by ten times. He also inherited his father's, and before that his grandfather, "Oakland Farm," a 450-acre estate in Portsmouth, Rhode Island. In 1925 he started a coach bus company called "The Short Line," which would carry passengers between Newport and Providence. Expanding The Short Line throughout New England and New York, he sold his company to George Sage in 1955. A member of the Republican Party, in 1928 he served as delegate to the Republican National Convention from Rhode Island, being elected to the State Senate later that year. He served as state senator from 1929 to 1935. In 1938 he was elected as Governor of Rhode Island, serving from 1939 to 1941. In 1940, Vanderbilt received an honorary LL.D. from Bates College. In 1941 he was called to active duty in the United States Navy with the rank of lieutenant commander and was initially assigned to the Panama Canal Zone. Promoted in 1942 to commander, he was later again promoted to the rank of captain prior to the end of the war. Following the Vanderbilt tradition of summering in Rhode Island and wintering elsewhere, he purchased a large farm in upper Williamstown, Massachusetts, which turned into a lush and fruitful estate. Designing a sprawling mansion at the center of the estate, he surrounded the home with numerous outbuildings, a swimming pool, green house and a private putting green. Devoting his final years to philanthropy, he gave away most of his inherited Vanderbilt money to various charities in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. On Vanderbilt's death, from cancer, in 1981, his homes were sold, demolished and subdivided. He is one of the few descendants of William Henry Vanderbilt not to be buried in the family tomb on Staten Island. He married three times: He and his first wife divorced in June of 1928 after a five-year stormy marriage, and the couple had a daughter. He married for a second time in December of 1929 and the couple had two daughters and a son before their divorce. In 1970 he married Helen Hope Cummings, who is buried in the same cemetery plot as him, and the couple had no children.