Whitehead Institute - Knowing Jack

Knowing Jack

Whitehead, who suffered multiple heart attacks and underwent several surgeries, told the story of waking up from heart surgery in the intensive care unit. “He was conscious, and there was a malfunction in one of the medical machines,” says Lester Hochberg. “It was a Sunday and there was no maintenance man or mechanic around. He took a look at the machine and realized it was one of Technicon’s. He asked the nurse to bring a screwdriver, opened it up and fixed it.”

This incident sounds like Whitehead, family and friends agree. One of his favorite sayings was "The only truth is in action."

“He was capable of great detail, but details were not big with him,” comments Peter Whitehead. “He resolutely was a big-picture guy. He was a great enthusiast, a terrific salesman. He was passionate, and ethical considerations were very important to him.”

An only child, Whitehead became a famously social adult. “He liked people broadly,” says Susan Whitehead. “He was very, very curious about what made people tick. He liked anybody’s life story.”

Whitehead loved parties and dancing. He enjoyed asking a serious question at dinner, going around the table to get everyone’s opinion, and probing away at the replies—a process that could be more than a little intimidating.

John, Peter and Susan Whitehead are the children of Constance Stein, Whitehead’s first wife. He married four times, and helped to bring up five stepchildren, who remember him fondly. “He wasn’t very good at showing his emotions, but he was there for you when you needed him,” says stepdaughter Camilla Blair. “He was a great mentor to me,” says stepson Evan Jones, whom Whitehead helped to form Digene, a biotech firm now capitalized at more than a billion dollars. “He would always steer me in the right direction.”

In Whitehead’s final years, the extended clan and friends would gather each holiday season in Vail, Colorado, where he could indulge his passion for skiing. He met Elizabeth Augustus Whitehead, his third wife and Evan Jones’s mother, while waiting for a ski lift.

“If you knew Jack at all, you went skiing with him,” says Lester Hochberg. “If you weren’t that good of a skier, you paid dearly. He skied like a madman, without any regard for his age and infirmities.”

“My dad was an enthusiast; and whatever he did, he did to the hilt,” John Whitehead says. “On every ski trip, he invariably ended up going over a cliff at least once, or getting stuck in a tree, or in some other amazing mishap. He played tennis and squash the same way—as if his life depended on each point.”

In 1992, while playing a vigorous game of squash, Whitehead collapsed on the court with a fatal heart attack. “He was playing his regular weekend squash opponent, to whom he had never lost a series,” his son remarks. “Some people say that collapsing on the court was the only way he could save what until then had been a perfect record!”

“He could be a pretty tough guy,” says Susan Whitehead. “He also was a completely embracing kind of person. And when you were in need, he was just phenomenal… He actively enjoyed his life. That’s a really unusual characteristic. I love him for that.”

“He never did anything in a small way,” says Robert Weinberg. “He was a person of grand gestures. He felt that he could do almost anything if he tried hard enough and invested enough money and got the right minds brought to bear. It’s people like him who change the world.”