Byron "Whizzer" White

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by Earl David Crockett

April 16, 2002

Today Byron "Whizzer" White died.  He was the last living appointment to Chief Justice Earl Warren's US Supreme Court.  He retired in 1993 after serving 31 years on the court. 

Now why is this of any interest to the descendents of Earl C. Crockett?  Earl repeatedly used White as a positive example of hard work, dedication, concentration, and use of time.  White took several classes from Earl at the University of Colorado.  He was an exceptional student plus receiving all-conference honors in three sports - football, baseball and basketball.  Earl would tell his students and children to follow White's example - to use their time effectively and there should be no wasted moments. 

White's father never graduated from high school and Byron, as a child, worked in the sugar beet fields in Northern Colorado.  But he applied himself and carefully allocated time to both scholastics and athletics.  He had great natural abilities, but his major strength was determination to succeed at whatever he undertook.  While on athletics road trips he took his books and studied while others talked or played cards.  (In those days, teams traveled by bus or train.)  Even when on the bench waiting for his time at bat in baseball he would have a book in his hand.  Nicholas DeB. Katzenbach, a Yale Law School classmate of White's who later served with him in the Justice Department, make some of the same observations Earl made:  [White possessed]  "a healthy skepticism - a probing questioning of premises and an insistence on conclusions reached by small and visible steps in a rational process as opposed to giant leaps of faith."  Katzenbach wrote that White believed "that hard work and determination can lead to success, and he lacked sympathy for those who abuse power and privilege as well as for those who whine about bad luck."

White was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in his junior year and became class valedictorian in 1938.  Whizzer returned to the CU campus in 1939 to play an alumni vs. new season starters football game before joining and reporting to Pittsburgh Pirates (later called the Steelers).  Earl took me to that game.  I remember Earl shouting, "Watch Whizzer!  Watch Whizzer go!"  I was 3 ½ years old and had not mastered the finer points of the game but decided that anyone who was the star and had such a fine name as Whizzer most certainly would have a distinguished uniform.  I spent the entire game trying to decide which beautifully black and white stripped player was Whizzer. 

White became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford after being the leading rusher in the NFL.  While there he met John F. Kennedy.  They met again in 1942 in the Pacific where White served as a Naval intelligence officer.  Lieutenant White was assigned to write the official report of the historic sinking of Kennedy's torpedo boat, PT-109, by a Japanese destroyer.  White later worked for the Kennedy presidential campaign as head of the national "Citizens for Kennedy" organization.  He then became the aggressive enforcer of the use of federal power to eradicate school segregation in Robert F. Kennedy's Justice Department.  White monitored federal efforts to quell the growing violence that accompanied the freedom rides, sit-ins and marches during the civil rights struggle in the South.  In May 1961, White went to Alabama to supervise 400 federal marshals and deputies sent to restore order.   John F. Kennedy named him, at age 44, to the Supreme Court in 1962.