Quiet Giver

By Daniel Kadlec

The first gift Tom White recalls bestowing on anyone was a $200 train ticket. Returning home to Boston after his tour as a paratrooper in World War II, he found an Army pal struggling with civilian life and alcohol abuse. "I got him back to his family in Minnesota, where he could straighten out," White says. "That was a lot of money back then. But I don't like to see people hurting."

Over the next 55 years, White would make and give away a small fortune--$50 million--in a singular bid to end as much hurting as his money would allow. What most distinguishes White isn't the amount he has given away. Compared with Ted Turner's $1 billion pledge to the United Nations, White's largesse is a driblet. But most big givers don't start redistributing their loot until they have made a pile, and many generous magnates, like Turner and Bill Gates, remain very rich even after they have made headlines for their charity.

Not White. He has been passing out money ever since he had any. On Christmas Eve 1952, he had two young children and just $1,100 in the bank. Yet he wrote checks totaling $700 to charities. In 1958--then with six children--he dropped $2,000 in the collection basket at St. Bernard's parish in Newton, Mass. The gift more than doubled the parish's take that week.

Today White's giving is so liberal that in a couple of years, he will be down to his last few million--rendering himself a relative pauper. What's more, White has never sought publicity for his generosity. He was initially reluctant to cooperate with this story, changing his mind only to help publicize the needs of his favorite charities.

He gives so quietly, his donations flew under the media radar for decades. But that changed a few years ago when he gave $3 million to fund research leading to an affordable treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis in Third World countries. Researchers wanted White to get his due, so they thanked him in a footnote in a Harvard Medical School report. His cover was blown. "People who want their names on buildings are not the kind of people who buy millions of dollars of medicine for the poor," observes Dr. Paul Farmer, whose groundbreaking work led to the TB treatment.

The source of White's well-dispersed fortune is the J.F. White Contracting Co., which he took over from his father in 1945. The firm built much of the Boston subway system, as well as the Charles River Dam and Foxboro Stadium. White's business success fueled a run to the top of Boston society. At one time, he belonged to half a dozen private clubs and was John F. Kennedy's chief fund raiser in New England. But White grew disillusioned keeping company with the rich, in his view an often selfish lot. Some 20 years ago, he decided to give away everything.

He prefers charities that benefit the needy over institutions like museums and universities. "I give Harvard $1,000 a year just so classmates will speak to me," he jokes. "They don't need my dough." Over the years, he figures, he has contributed to as many as 130 charities, but lately he has focused on five: Boston's Partners in Health, which delivers medical care to the poor around the world; Bread for the World, a Washington-based group that presses lawmakers on agendas such as spending more on food stamps and raising the minimum wage; Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama, based in Montgomery, which funds the appeals of death-row inmates; Odwin Learning Center, a Boston nonprofit that helps local adults get into college; and Sojourner House, another Boston group, which provides local emergency shelter. White, 81, a devout Catholic who goes to church every day, also funds the after-school programs and summer camp run by Boston's St. Francis de Sales-St. Philip parish. He gives only to charities that help people regardless of their faith.

White doesn't view his efforts as heroic or even noteworthy. "People overemphasize what I'm doing," he says. "I get tremendous pleasure out of giving." On being named America's best philanthropist, White says, "I think you've got the wrong guy."

We disagree. White is personally involved in every charity he favors. "He'll call once a month to see how we're doing and what we need," says Anastasia Lopopolo, executive director of Sojourner House. Mary Tacelli, executive director of Odwin Learning Center, recalls White's first donation of $5,000. "He apologized for the small amount," she says. "I was flabbergasted."

Had White not shed his wealth, he would be worth more than $100 million today. Instead, he chose to give away systematically 897,000 shares of the 900,000 he once owned in his construction company, and he's now worth about $8 million. Some of his shares went to his seven children and six stepchildren. But most have gone to charity, and White isn't done yet. Over the next two years, he will further reduce his net worth to about $2.5 million; then, he says, he will stop and live off the interest.

"He's not just giving scraps from the table," says the Rev. David Beckmann, who runs Bread for the World. "This is sacrificial giving."

White calls it "a crock" to hold that everything you give will come back to you. Yet clearly some of it does. Take that $200 train ticket he bought his Army pal. A year later, White got a surprise check in the mail from his friend, repaying the debt plus $20 interest. "I sent him back the $20," White says. "I was just doing what I love, helping people with my money."

--Reported by Julie Rawe

With reporting by Julie Rawe