Tommy

About the Book

This autobiography is about a member of the "greatest generation," a life  that began during the First World War and experienced the Great Depression, World War II and the half century since. It is not strictly a chronology, but a telling of events selected for their interest and meaning.

In the first of four parts, author William T. White, “Tommy,” describes 18 years of pre-World War II life in an Arizona mining town, complete with its substantial race prejudice against Mexicans and even those non-Mexicans who lived where Mexicans lived. Tommy tells of an even more powerful prejudice, variously religious and pseudo- scientific, directed against him and his family because of his sister’s epilepsy.

Part II describes the author’s experiences in World War II, first as a B-17 navigator flying from England and North Africa, and then serving in the Pacific as a radar-bombardier for the B-29 attacks on Japan.

Part III covers twenty-years service as a regular Air Force officer, including three action packed years as a military attaché in Communist Yugoslavia during the cold war. Part IV describes a post-military academic career that, from many points of view, contained events that are as interesting or even more so than those in military life.

Most of the chapters in the book are preceded by a brief small-print note that is a brief quotation or personal comment usually relating to an event described in the chapter. Taken together, these notes constitute a theme, both for the book and for the author’s working life. That theme is essentially that good and effective human organizations are those that are based fully on truth and sublimated to the combined best interests of those who own them, work in them and/or are served by them.

About the Author

William T. (Tom) White has had three sometimes overlapping but separate careers.  He began working at his hometown bank when he was a 15-year old high school student, mixing his bank employment with his high school and college education for seven years before World War II.  Joining the Army Air Force before the second war began, he trained as a navigator and flew combat missions from England, North Africa and the Pacific islands. At the end of World War II, he was given a regular commission and served 26 years in the United States Air Force. In 1948 Tom completed training as a nuclear weapons officer and in 1951 graduated from pilot training.   

While in the Air Force, Tom continued his education, receiving his doctorate in Economics from Georgetown University in 1965.  In 1967, he retired from the Air Force as a colonel to enter the world of academia as the founding dean of the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.  On leave from the university, he served as the Director of the Department of Commerce for the State of Nevada, supervising banking, savings and loans, real estate and insurance.  Believing that he had completed his tasks at the Department of Commerce, Tom returned to teaching, research and consulting at UNLV. After some twenty years as an academic administrator and professor of economics he retired to full-time consulting in 1986. In 1994, he was awarded the status of Distinguished Nevadan by the University of Nevada Board of Regents.

In 1990, Tom lost June Broe, his wife of 47 years, to cancer.  In 1999, he married Lola Benton, whom he knew from their college days in the late 1930’s.  They live and write in Tempe, Arizona.