A Life: Tom White’s ‘social life was his family and town affairs’

Panelist Annie Swasey, a 1942 graduate of the North Hartland School, laughs as Tom White, a 1944 graduate of the Hartland Four Corners School, tells a story about his days as a student during at Damon Hall Sunday, May 7, 2006.

Panelist Annie Swasey, a 1942 graduate of the North Hartland School, laughs as Tom White, a 1944 graduate of the Hartland Four Corners School, tells a story about his days as a student during at Damon Hall Sunday, May 7, 2006. "Didn't tell half what we could have I guess," said another panelist John Barrell of Lebanon, not pictured. Subjects ranged from the old schools' outhouses and holiday traditions to walking to school when the temperature dipped to 50 below zero. (Valley News - James M. Patterson) Valley News file — James M. Patterson

Tom and Anne White at their wedding in 1955. (Family photograph)

Tom and Anne White at their wedding in 1955. (Family photograph) Family photograph

Tom White has served on the townís selectboard for 19 years. Heís pictured in Damon Hall, the townís municipal building on May 13, 2004. (Valley News - Tom Rettig)

Tom White has served on the townís selectboard for 19 years. Heís pictured in Damon Hall, the townís municipal building on May 13, 2004. (Valley News - Tom Rettig) Valley News file — Tom Rettig

By MAGGIE CASSIDY

Valley News Correspondent

Published: 12-15-2024 4:01 PM

Just about every morning for decades, longtime Hartland Selectboard member Tom White woke up and drove the town’s roads. 

“Every day he was out in his Cadillac, whether it was rain, snow or shine, just driving around, noticing things that I hadn’t noticed or no one else had noticed,” said Bob Stacey, the former Hartland Town Manager who was hired by White and his board colleagues in 1997. “He’d bring it to our attention and we’d get on it.”

The town maintains three-quarters of its roughly 100 miles of roads, Stacey said, and White traversed them all, the majority unpaved. Sometimes he’d stop for a chat during morning chores at the dairy farm run by his cousin and fellow board member Gordon Richardson. He often ended up at Damon Hall — sometimes twice or thrice — where he’d check in with Stacey and might see Clyde Jenne, who was in the midst of a nearly 27-year run as town clerk.

“You’d see him out riding the roads of Hartland most every day,” Jenne said.

The road routine carried on even after White wrapped up his 30-year board tenure in 2016, said his wife, Anne White, in an interview at her residence. The reason, she said, was simple: “He wanted to be sure that they were all right.”

Tom White died last December at age 92 from heart failure. Defined by his love for his family and for Hartland, he was known too for his competitive passion for sports and for his near-obsession with woodworking — and for working in general. He took over his father’s sawmill, M.T. White & Sons, before a long career as a plant manager at Vermont Log Buildings, which was headquartered in town. 

“The other word I have written here is a workaholic,” Anne White said with a laugh, reading from a list of notes. 

His working life started early. Born on the first day of spring in 1931, Tom White built a shed on his family’s Four Corners property just 12 years later. He skipped eighth grade at his one-room schoolhouse, Anne White said, and graduated from Windsor High School in 1948 before working at a local dairy farm. 

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He served in the Army during the Korean War, including a year in Japan doing radio work, but generally minimized identifying as a veteran because he didn’t want to detract from service members who saw combat, said one of his five children, Jeff White. 

Sometime thereafter, Anne White occasionally noticed the 5-foot-9 athlete at a few baseball games, where the loyal Brooklyn Dodgers fan represented the town of Hartland in one of his favorite sports. The couple first got to know one another at local dances they each attended in places like Norwich and Thetford. 

They took to the floor together in square dances and round dances, and were married in 1955. They raised two girls and three boys in their first and only home together, a Three Corners property they shared for 68 years. 

“Sometimes, you just know,” Anne White said.

The couple remained “constantly on the floor” at local dances across the decades, Jenne said, treating onlookers to “see somebody just enjoying themselves for the fun of doing it.”

“He loved his family through and through,” Richardson said. “His social life was his family and town affairs.” 

As a father, Tom White was a great coach and mentor, Jeff White said. He brought all of his boys in for stints in the sawmill industry — some that lasted longer than others — and kept his family at his center. 

He never coached in sports, funneling his enthusiasm and competitiveness straight into the field. Nor did he consider himself the best athlete, Anne and Jeff White said, though snippets of his feats in baseball and basketball are peppered throughout the Valley News archives of the 1950s and ’60s, such as his triple that “started the fireworks” in a 7-0 win over Bethel in 1952.

His competitive streak continued into adulthood, Jeff White recalled, but he always made sure to have fun. During a hockey game against St. Johnsbury, for example, one opposing player was “being particularly antagonistic,” and “near the end of the game, he and my dad are at center ice just duking it out,” Jeff White said.

“But what I remember about after that little scrape was at the end of the game, they both skated off arm in arm, laughing,” he said. 

Jenne, a current Selectboard member who first got to know Tom White when they both worked at Vermont Log Buildings in the mid-1960s, said White’s athleticism was also on view at work. Jenne remembered an instance where White, from afar, noticed another worker doing something wrong and leapt — quite literally — into action.

“Tom come running out of the mill and cleared a three-, three-a-half-foot pile of logs like he was an Olympic runner to do a little chewing down at the other end,” Jenne said. “That’s one of the things that’s always stuck with me, was his athletic abilities to clear a pile of logs that I’d have trouble climbing up on top of.”

Tom White toured plants around the country owned by Vermont Log Buildings, now called Real Log Homes and headquartered in Claremont, but was perhaps most comfortable working with a set of tools in his hands. He built all manner of wooden treasures, including elegant bureaus, shelves, cabinets and other pieces, many of which remain in his family’s homes and in Damon Hall. 

A series of sheds he erected behind his home and nicknamed the “condos” remain visible in Three Corners, and the Four Corners structure from his youth still stands.

“He could look at a hunk of wood and just see a table or a chair where most of us would see it and turn it into a pile of sawdust,” Jeff White said. “He built furniture — he had no concept of how much it was really worth.”

Tom White brought a fiscal conservatism to the Selectboard, his family said, and loved to debate, often with gusto. Stacey, the town manager, said White didn’t mind frequently finding himself as the minority member of a 4-1 vote.

That included his objections to the eventual reconfiguration of the Three Corners intersection near his home. His family said he was not convinced that the change was needed nor worth taxpayers’ money. He was also concerned about moving a Civil War monument, recalled Richardson, who favored the project.

Yet he always got along with his board colleagues, even amid disagreement, according to Richardson and Stacey. And by the end of the Three Corners project, Jeff White said, his father was pleased to see the statue maintained a place of honor.

Through it all, Tom White was “passionate about people who had any kind of problems, or even people who didn’t,” Richardson said. “He wanted people to have a fair chance.”

Richardson also pointed to White’s approach to a pair of town-managed funds that could be doled out to people in need. 

“Tom, without any hesitation, always would be in favor of ‘give them what they want,’ and especially if there were children in the house,” Richardson said. “Always, it’s just how he was.”

Sometimes, his family would catch wind of that generosity in other ways. More than once, Anne White said, someone thanked her for loans or donations that Tom had given without fanfare nor expectation of repayment — doled out so quietly that even she did not know about them. She and Jeff White said Tom wanted to do things for the right reasons, even hiding his softer side from public view for years. 

“He’s actually a pretty softhearted guy,” Jeff White said, “but I think most people know it now.”

Maggie Cassidy can be reached at magg.cass@gmail.com.