Whitehead Institute - Giving back

Giving back

“Jack was worth a billion dollars on paper,” says Lester Hochberg, tax attorney and friend. “There weren’t many billionaires then.”

But in his final years at Technicon, “he hated it,” says his daughter Susan Whitehead. “He really liked when it was at the front-end of the industry, and it was about discovery and breakthroughs and creating something quite new. Once it became a big business, a volume-driven business, he really did not enjoy it at all.”

“The skills that you need to start a company and grow it are very different from what you need to run a major international company,” comments John Whitehead. That was very frustrating for Whitehead—and those who worked for him. “There was one weekend when all the top executives quit; I was one of them.”

Whitehead had planned to eventually turn over Technicon to his children. Increasingly, however, this looked like a mixed blessing, one his children didn’t want.

Instead, Whitehead, who had often told his children and stepchildren that “you’ve got to give back,” decided to make a different contribution, in his lifetime and on his terms. He would create a research institute, and that would function as a legacy to his children.

“In the early 1970s, my dad began to seriously pursue the idea of a research institute,” says John Whitehead. “He asked Jim Shannon, a former NIH Director, and Irvine Page, head of research at the Cleveland Clinic, along with Leonard Skeggs, to help him. (Skeggs eventually became one of the original members of the Whitehead Institute board.) The idea was to do in an academic setting what Technicon had been doing commercially for decades: applied biology and engineering.”

Over the years, as he met with top experts in medicine and research, that concept gradually shifted from clinical toward basic research.

“He was patient with it,” says son Peter Whitehead. “He listened to people. I can’t think of anything else in his life that he would dedicate 10 frustrating years to doing.”

After meeting with several universities, Whitehead and his associates struck a deal with Duke, announced with much press coverage. Unfortunately, while Duke administrators proved both enthusiastic and generous, the deal fell through, also with much publicity.

Whitehead was unsuccessful in his attempts to recruit a research director, while Duke executives and researchers became uneasy about Whitehead’s terms. (For their trouble, he later awarded a parting gift of $10 million to aid young biomedical researchers.)

“Jack realized that he had done things in the wrong order,” comments Arthur Brill, family friend and longtime Secretary of Whitehead Institute. ”It would have been better to first recruit a director and then, together, pick a host institution.”

Whitehead had planned to have his new research institute hold the stock of Technicon. But over the years, he found that he needed to demonstrate to prospective partners that he could produce cash in hand. In 1980, he ended up selling the company to Revlon, then a major player in medical care. He walked away with Revlon stock that would provide funding for his long-deferred dream.