Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. Since 1964, to be exact. So he was unabashedly emotional as the Senate Finance Committee neared completion of its work on health reform. "I feel the way I feel and I am who I am," the West Virginia Democrat said at the end of a teary, post-midnight monologue about his work as a VISTA volunteer 45 years ago.

Who is he and how does he feel? The great-grandson and namesake of America's first billionaire, John D. Rockefeller IV is a 6-foot-6, 72-year-old Harvard graduate who studied Japanese in Tokyo and Chinese at Yale. He's also a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor - and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies...