During his more than 50 years in San Diego, Harvey P. White left a distinct impression on the city and on the people he met.
Standing 6 feet, 7 inches, he could be intimidating and even stern at times. But family, friends and colleagues also describe the self-made business titan — who made his home in Del Mar with his wife, Sheryl White — as a gregarious and modest man, a caring and involved father, a devoted husband, generous and cultured philanthropist, superb businessman and mentor and passionate San Diego Padres fan.
White was one of the seven co-founders of the San Diego-based semiconductor firm Qualcomm in 1985, and in 1999 he cofounded the telecommunications firm Leap Wireless (which was acquired by AT&T in 2014). After retiring, White also became one of the city’s leading art patrons, particularly for The Old Globe and the San Diego Museum of Art.
White was 90 years old when he passed away on Dec. 18, following a year of declining health. White’s family, friends and colleagues held private memorial services for him last month and didn’t announce his passing until last week. But in interviews on Thursday and Friday, they were effusive in describing the man he was and the legacy he leaves behind.
Harvey White, photographed in 2002 at the headquarters of Leap Wireless, which he co-founded and where he served as chairman and CEO. (John Gastaldo / UT file)
Humble beginnings
Harvey White began his life as Sven Harvey Philip on March 19, 1934, in Providence, R.I. His father, Ake Philip, was a Swedish immigrant who divorced his wife, Helen Marsh, when Sven Harvey was a boy, so she moved with her son back to her native Parkersburg, W.V.
In 1939, Helen married her second husband, Gordon White, who adopted her son in 1942 and he began using the more American-sounding name Harvey White. Family finances were always tight, but in 1955, Harvey graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan and Marshall College with a degree in economics. In 1956, he married his first wife, Frances Hamilton, and they had three children Katherine, Sarah and Philip.
White worked at a series of high-tech companies on the East Coast in the 1960s before moving his family to San Diego in 1972, where he became group vice president of Rohr’s Industrial Systems division.
A San Diego booster
Phil White of La Jolla said his father “came from humble beginnings,” which taught him the value of hard work. But he always made time for family.
When Phil and his elder sisters were growing up in San Diego they had no idea the pressure their dad was under. Instead, he remembers his father frequently taking them camping and to Padres games and driving them to school sports commitments. He remembers his dad as a fun-loving man who enjoyed traveling and play racquetball, relished poker games with his buddies and devoured books and crossword puzzles.
“He provided us with the creature comforts of life and all these opportunities to see the world and experience stuff, but he was really a great father and I had a happy childhood and happy times with my sisters and mom,” Phil White said.
In 1978, White joined Linkabit as the vice president of finance and began a 20-plus-year working relationship with Irwin Jacobs. White served as director, senior vice president and chief operating officer while at Linkabit, and oversaw its growth and sale to M/A-COM in 1980. Both Jacobs and White stayed on with M/A-COM until 1985.
Jacobs said Thursday that he was very impressed by White’s level of intelligence and his ability to work with others to solve problems. Jacobs also credits White with convincing him to start another company together in 1985, rather than return to teaching or work in the venture capital market, two options Jacobs said he was considering at the time.
“He might have been instrumental in convincing me that trying another company could be a good thing,” Jacobs said. “He said ‘we really accomplished something with Linkabit, why don’t we give it a go again.’ And that was Qualcomm.”
At Qualcomm, White served as president and vice chair and oversaw the global deployment of the OMNITracs trucking product, the advent and growth of CDMA cellular technology and the development of Qualcomm’s intellectual property system. Then in 1998, White led the spinoff company Leap Wireless International (the parent of Cricket Wireless), where he served as chairman and CEO until leaving in 2004 to start his own consulting firm, SHWx2.
After retiring from daily corporate life, White spent many years serving on company and foundation boards of directors, including ViaSat, UCSD Rady School of Management, The Salk Institute and San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. One of his passions was volunteering as a mentor to budding entrepreneurs and business leaders.
Rick Baldridge, the now-retired president and CEO of ViaSat in Carlsbad, said Thursday that White became a trusted adviser while serving on the ViaSat board. Baldridge described White as a focused, enthusiastic, intuitive and very bright mentor over the years.
“He was incredibly unselfish with his time and he was very independent, someone I could talk to about issues that I was facing and very focused on helping me. It wasn’t personal to him, it was an investment in me and ViaSat. He loved to work. He was alway excited to talk about challenges in the business and personal challenges I had. He would light up whenever you’d meet with him,” Baldridge said.
Sheryl White said that because her husband grew up in the poor state of West Virginia, it was important to him as a San Diego business leader to help build the city up with great job opportunities and cultural attractions.
“He was always very devoted to being a good citizen and he got really tired of hearing people talk about San Diego as just a good place to come on vacation,” she said. “He’d say ‘We have all this industry here and smart people starting companies.’ He didn’t like it being called a sleepy town.”
Sheryl and Harvey White cutting their wedding cake at The Old Globe in 2001. (The Old Globe)
Arts leadership
White shared the same philosophy with Irwin and Joan Jacobs about bearing a responsibility to use their wealth for good in the community, particularly the arts and cultural scene.
“From a business point of view,” Jacobs said, “it’s important to the employees to not only have these activities available, but also to be proud of the company and the people there who are helping in various cultural and charitable activities.”
White was serving on the board of directors at The Old Globe in the late 1990s when he met his second wife, Sheryl, who was also on the board as a representative of California Bank & Trust.
During a fundraising campaign, she was asked to hit up another board member to double their annual contribution to the Globe. Everyone else working the campaign was too intimidated to ask White, so she volunteered and he agreed without hesitation. A year or so later, he became her client at the bank, and over time they fell in love.
She praised his openness to her taste in rock music, embraced her appreciation for visual arts and his limitless generosity for the causes she valued most, including Planned Parenthood.
“Our 25-year love affair deserves a novel,” she said. “He was always so loving. If everybody could have a love experience like that in their life, it would be wonderful. It was so much of a dream that it will never leave me.”
In 2001, they married on the stage of The Old Globe Theatre, and in 2009, they were the lead donors for the rebuilding of the Globe’s 250-seat arena theater, now known as the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre.
Perhaps because it was where he met his wife, White agreed to have his name on the Globe’s in-the-round theater. But generally he preferred to donate quietly, without any hooplah. Another rare exception related to his passion for the Padres.
When Petco Park was being built, the Whites were among the founding subscriber group who purchased prime seats behind home plate. They rarely missed a home game after the ballpark opened in 2004. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when games were played without fans in the stands, White agreed to have a cardboard photo of his head on a stick taped to his seat during home game telecasts to show his devotion to the team and because he found it hilarious.
White was on the search committee that hired Barry Edelstein when he was appointed artistic director of The Old Globe in 2012. Edelstein said he was especially impressed by the art-filled and architecturally stunning home the Whites built in Del Mar.
“Harvey was just a lovely guy with a very dry sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye,” Edelstein said. “He was a man of very refined taste. Somehow over the course of his extremely successful life in business that made him very wealthy, he sought out opportunities to learn and broaden his horizons and enrich his aesthetic well being. By the time I got to know him, he was a guy with a highly sophisticated sense of art and the accompanying sense of commitment to community that made him want to share what he loved about the arts. That’s the purest vision of philanthropy.”
Harvey is survived by his wife Sheryl of Del Mar; his sister Katherine Grego of South Carolina; his children Katherine White of Del Mar, Sarah White (David Gray) of San Diego, Phil White (Ann) of La Jolla and London, and his stepson Greg Palmer (Kassie) of Madison, Wis. He is also survived by 10 grandchildren.
Sherl and Harvey White at The Old Globe’s 2018 gala. (Melissa Jacobs)