White, Tom

Tom joined Highlights in 1984 and became a senior editor a few years later. A native of Rochester, New York, Tom lived in Boston until after his graduation from Harvard, when he entered the Navy. He served in the western Pacific during World War II. After working for some years in marketing, advertising, and public relations, Tom made the career change to journalism, the field, he says, where he belonged all along. Before coming to work at Highlights, he was a reporter and editor for several magazines and newspapers.Tom has one son and two granddaughters. He and his wife, Leah, now live in Odessa, Texas, Leah's hometown, where they work on their Macintoshes and keep in touch with Highlights by E-mail, fax, and telephone.Tom and Leah have worked as a team to edit a number of the annual reports of the Highlights Foundation workshops at Chautauqua. "You would think we could write the Great American Kid's Book after hearing, reading, and editing so much good material on writing for children," Tom says. "In fact, I'm thinking of doing just that."