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.