After learning to fly at Lewis University some 40 years ago, Naperville resident Harold E. White said he would one day like to create an endowment for what was then a 300-student college.
Recently, eight months after White’s death at age 79, members of his family presented university officials with a check for $8 million. That check brought to $15 million the total of White’s gifts to the school.
`Without a doubt, this will allow the university to become one of the best private institutions in the Midwest,” said Brother James Gaffney, president of Lewis. “This is just one piece of the tremendous generosity Mr. White has shown to this university and other community institutions.”
Gaffney said the grant will be used to upgrade facilities at the Harold E. White Aviation Center, which was built in 1991 with a $2 million gift. That facility is used to train students in several aviation-related fields, such as computer science and aircraft maintenance and mechanics. The grant also will be used for faculty training and scholarships.
`Aviation-related courses are easily the most expensive programs we have,” Gaffney said, adding that the university’s annual budget is about $30 million. “This will allow us to do many things we wouldn’t have otherwise been able to.”
White made his millions as publisher and editor of the Naperville Sun from 1936 to 1991. The newspaper was sold in 1991 to Copley Newspapers. “Beyond journalism,” Gaffney said, “Mr. White’s first loves were aviation and his community, which is why he has given to so many over the years.”
In addition to its gift to Lewis, White’s will included an $8 million endowment to North Central College, the Naperville liberal arts college from which White and his late wife, Eva, graduated in 1935.
Since the 1950s, when White learned to fly single-engine planes at Lewis, the institution has transformed itself from a small college-Lewis College, to be exact-that specialized in aviation to a 4,300-student liberal arts university that offers degrees in numerous fields.
