The richest man in town
At 84, Tom White has achieved his life's goal. He's given away his entire fortune.
There's a popular bumper sticker that says: "He who dies with the most toys wins." Tom White's bumper sticker would read: "He who gives it all away wins."
It looks as if White will get his wish. At 84, the construction millionaire has given away his fortune. If he has his way, he'll be down to his last quarter when he draws his last breath.
"Give me three good reasons why I shouldn't," he says. Then he proceeds to list three reasons he should. "I can't take it with me, my kids are OK, and my wife's taken care of."
He gave away his first chunk of money after World War II,
when an Army buddy needed some cash. White gave him $200. Since then, he estimates he has given away $75 million, pretty much all of his assets. He has supported more than 100 causes over the years, but his biggest gift by far has gone to Partners in Health, the program made famous last year with the publication of Tracy Kidder's book "Mountains Beyond Mountains." The book details the work done in Haiti and other Third World countries by Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard professor and infectious-disease specialist whose work on AIDS and tuberculosis for the world's poorest has been hailed as groundbreaking. White put up the initial money for the program and has steadily funneled tens of millions of dollars
into it. It all began with a bread oven. A 1983 meeting in Haiti would change both men's lives, as well as the way the medical world would treat poor people with AIDS and drug-resistant tuberculosis. Then a Harvard medical student working in Haiti, Farmer was dispatched to the Port-au-Prince airport to fetch White, a successful businessman on an errand.
White was 64, 40 years older than the brash young student who viewed the capitalist with more than a grain of skepticism. "He was wearing bright checkered golf pants, red and other offensive colors, and some sort of golf shirt, and he had on a hat," Farmer says.
It was White's first trip to Haiti; he had been asked by Project Bread, one of his charities, to build a community oven in Cange, a rural slum, so women would not have to walk 10 miles each way to buy bread. "It was a no-brainer," says White, who was president of J.F. White Contracting Co., a business started by his father. "So I went over, and who did I meet but Paul? What a piece of work." White chuckles. "He'd hardly give me the time of day because he thought I was a member of the establishment."
On the long, dusty ride to Cange, Farmer, who had asked Project Bread for the oven, baited White: How do you feel about unions? Who did you support in the last presidential election? ("All sorts of inappropriate questions that a 24-year-old should not be asking a potential donor," Farmer says today.)
To Farmer's surprise, White replied that he was in favor of unions and that he had voted against Ronald Reagan. Farmer was impressed not only by White's answers but by his emotional reaction to the suffering he saw in Haiti. "That made a big difference to me," says Farmer, to whom Haiti has become a second home. "The inspiration for Partners in Health was born right then and there." In 1987 it was established, with a $1 million donation from White, who sits on the group's advisory board.
"He said yes, and he has continued to say yes," is the way Farmer describes White's contribution to Partners in Health. "He has the gift of empathy. He's probably the greatest man I've ever met." It's high praise coming from a man who has himself been called a saint.
A quiet force On a recent day, White is relaxing in his two-bedroom condo overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge. It is a nice place, but hardly a millionaire's digs, with its galley kitchen and combination living/dining area. He's forthright about his life, warts and all, and quick with a laugh. But his eyes flash at the mention of certain subjects, particularly Haiti. He thinks the Bush administration's policy toward former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been devastating to both democracy and the poor. Aristide recently fled Haiti as rebels overtook the capital.
"Bush hates Aristide because he won't be a toady," says White, who "goes looking" for Aristide whenever he's in Haiti. "I often find him at his orphanage in Port-au-Prince. He's going to do what he thinks is best for the poor people. . . . Aristide has had nothing to work with." Under Bush, the United States has helped block $500 million in aid to the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, ravaging its economy and basic services. "People are literally starving, especially children. It's unbelievable," White says.
White has long been a quiet force in Boston. His company built Foxboro Stadium, the Charles River dam, part of the subway system, the Park Plaza Hotel, and the underground garage at Post Office Square. White was a confidante of Cardinal Cushing and served as the New England fund-raiser for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign. He has been on the boards of the Harvard Divinity School, Boston College, the New England Patriots, and the JFK Library. And for decades he has quietly been giving away money to various causes, especially those dealing with the poor. He put up seed money to help start Nativity Preparatory School in Roxbury, which offers children from impoverished homes a prep-school education.
"I kept going to the bottom tier, which is Haiti," is the way White describes his charitable causes. Whenever his alma mater, Harvard, would call looking for money, he'd say, "For God's sake, you've got $15 billion over there, and I've got people over here starving to death. You tell me what I should do." Recounting this, White chuckles and adds, "I still give $1,000 a year so my classmates will talk to me."
There's no doubt that, given the choice, he'd rather have a cement-block building in Haiti named after him than a Harvard library. Actually, he'd rather not have either. But in 1999, the board of Partners in Health decided to name a treatment center at their headquarters in Haiti the Thomas J. White Center. Across central Haiti, patients talk of going to "the Tom White" to get help.
Last year, when Farmer and White were in Haiti, patients asked to meet this Tom White who had funded the facility where they were being treated. Farmer was the translator, speaking Creole. But when it came to relaying the message from the patients' spokesman to their benefactor, Farmer could barely continue. "I had more than a lump in my throat," he says. He was in tears.
The message: "In the name of the Tom White patients, we'd like to welcome you to the Tom White pavilion." White, too, was teary-eyed, but he thanked the patients, said they were models for other places with similar problems, and told them it was their job to get well and help other patients.
"He has basically given away his wealth," Farmer says. "I've never seen it before, have you? I've read about it in the Bible."
Fighting battles From Irish Catholic kid to major philanthropist, it was not a smooth road for White. The son of an alcoholic with a nasty temper, he says he grew up in Cambridge with poor self-esteem. White's mother, overwhelmed with six children, wasn't much help. "If you came in with a bloody nose, she'd say, `You have to fight your own battles.' " he recalls. When young Tom brought home all A's, it still "wasn't good enough" for his parents.
"I think the suffering in my own family made me want to help others," White says. His father proved successful in real estate, fuel, and construction. But the Depression wiped him out. Though the family was comfortable -- "we had the only single-family home on Ellery Street," White says -- his father was cheap. "He would never buy us a bike, and I remember stuffing paper in my shoes," says White, who made do with hand-me-downs.
Attending Harvard on an ROTC grant, he graduated on June 6, 1942. Two days later, he was at Fort Bragg in California, volunteering as a paratrooper. He jumped into Normandy the night before D-Day, returning home with Silver and Bronze stars. In 1947, he took over his father's construction business with a couple of old coal trucks and $20,000. He didn't know anything about building, but it turns out he did know something about making money.
Once White got a glimpse of Haiti, that was it; he decided there could be no better use for his money. "I was angry," he says. "You see the kids with red hair and distended bellies," signs of severe malnutrition. During one trip to Partners in Health's clinic in Cange, White told Farmer and his colleagues to outfit the village's shanties with cement floors and tin roofs -- and send him the bill. More than 100 huts were fixed.
"The floors were dirt, and when it rained, people would sleep in the mud," he says. He is proud of the food program at Cange -- "the kids get two meals a day." Today, Partners in Health runs a full-service hospital, AIDS and tuberculosis treatment clinics, a women's health center, and several cottage industries in Haiti. It has also launched programs in Peru, Siberia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Boston.
"They would call me and say, `We have 10 cases of drug-resistant TB,' and at that time it cost $25,000 a patient," White says. "They kept calling: `We've identified 20 more,' and then 20 more." White never said no.
"Finally, about four or five years ago, it just got beyond me," he says. "I don't have money like Bill Gates. What I gave away was all I have, but it wasn't all that much." He says that he still has "a few hundred thousand bucks" in a charitable gift fund. As for Partners in Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has become a major donor.
Motivated to help White's giving comes from the heart, not the ego. When Time magazine named him "best philanthropist" in 2001, he said: "You've got the wrong man." He says he loathes stories about "self-made men," particularly from politicians. "All these guys brag that they did it all themselves. It's a lot of baloney. Everyone gets breaks. Along the way, I've had a lot of breaks."
Although he is one of them, he doesn't particularly care for wealthy people. "With them, it's all about me, me, me," he says. "All they talk about is their golf scores and the big new house they're going to build." Though he used to belong to prestigious private clubs, White stopped going and no longer hobnobs with the rich. About 10 years ago, his wife told him: "You finally did it. No one has invited us anywhere this year."
Not that she minds. Lois White has been married to Tom for 30 years; between the two of them, they have 13 children -- six of hers, seven of his. There are 37 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. She has accompanied her husband to Haiti on several occasions and is thrilled with the center there. "It's like an oasis in the middle of a desert," she says. "They have people coming from 30 to 40 miles away, walking two or three days for treatment."
Five years ago, Tom White sold the big house on Cape Cod that he bought cheap and redid himself, but he and Lois still have a small home in Osterville and an apartment in Jupiter, Fla. They don't travel the way they used to, and when they do, they stay in budget places.
"But we're not wearing hair shirts," he says. "I don't collect art and wine. If I want a beer, I have a beer. I have everything I need."
White says that people in trouble gravitate toward him. But maybe it's the other way around. His wife says he can't go into Harvard Square without emptying his wallet.
"Did he tell you about the red-wagon lady?" Lois asks, and then proceeds to tell the story. For years, Tom has given money to a homeless woman who collects bottles and cans in the square and redeems them. One day, he asked her what else he could do to help her. "What I would really like is a red wagon because then I could pick up more bottles and take them to the store," she replied. When he got home, he went to Sears and picked up a red wagon. "The next morning, he goes pulling the wagon up to Harvard Square," says Lois, chuckling at the memory. "When she saw him coming, she burst into tears."
Asked about it, White is dismissive. "I got a bigger kick out of it than she did."
A trip to
Ask him why, and White, who attends Mass daily, replies: "I'm motivated a lot by what Jesus wants me to do, or what I think he wants me to do. And I think he wants me to help make the world a better place."
His family, he says, is taken care of; he gave his children stock in his company "way back, when it was so cheap." His oldest son now runs the company, and his youngest son works there. His daughter, Linda Fiske, says she and her siblings were brought up to believe that all people are equal and that "we're all in this together."
"We marvel at our father because he's so darn intelligent and so compassionate," says Fiske, 50, a preschool teacher who lives in Hingham. "He's been a tremendous role model. Some people might feel that as a child, you're entitled [to an inheritance]. But why should you be? I feel if your parents raised you, and put in so much time and energy, they don't owe you. . . . He has been so incredibly generous over the years that none of us feels deprived. None of us are the type to go out and buy yachts and take trips around the world."
As for Tom White, he says he has but one regret: "I'm sorry I don't have more money to give away."
