Frank White
Works by Frank White:
From ABC BookWorld, "White could claim to be the province's oldest active author when he published his memoir That Went by Fast at the age of 100 in 2014, a follow-up to his 2013 bestseller Milk Spills and One-Log Loads.
A workingman and small businessman who didn't retire until age 80, White wrote about his long life in a colloquial, unvarnished style that got his books onto the B.C. Bestseller Lists. They are still popular on the BC Ferries newsstands. White's trademark was his self-deprecating humour.
His was a typical life for a British Columbian of his time, comprised mostly of endless hard work, although on the evidence of his stories it was seldom dull. He grew up in Abbotsford the son of the town butcher and at age eight began serving customers in his father's shop by standing on a butter box so he could see over the counter.
His father bought the first Model-T delivery truck in Abbotsford but couldn't get the hang of the horseless carriage so young Frankie taught himself to operate it, lying about his age to get his driver's licence at age 13. "By the age of 13 I already had two professions: butcher and truck driver," he wrote.
He built on his early start to follow the trucking boom that hit BC in the 1930s and 1940s, pioneering highway freighting then truck logging. In the 1950s he became a small-scale "gyppo" logger before moving to the coastal fishing village of Pender Harbour, where he operated an excavating business, a gas station and a municipal water system.
Along the way Frank White endured shipwrecks, topped 200-foot spartrees, fought forest fires, got physical with log rustlers, built houses, built boats, raised a family, dabbled in politics, built early computers, buried a beloved wife and daughter, travelled the world and wrote books.
At age 92 he married the former New Yorker writer Edith Iglauer, 89, and they continued to live in their small waterfront cottage in Pender Harbour until the present. He died peacefully with his family and caregivers around him and his sense of humour intact. In his final hours when a nurse asked him how he was, he whispered between gasps, "Hundred per cent!"
White was bemused by his longevity and the celebrity that came with it. "When I was fifty and still had most of my marbles," he wrote, "all people wanted me to tell them was why their car stalled at the intersection. Now that everything is starting to get hazy, they're not satisfied unless I can tell them the meaning of life."
Franklin Wetmore White was born May 9, 1914 in Sumas, Washington. He leaves behind his wife Edith Iglauer, a daughter Marilyn, two sons Howard and Donald, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. He died on October 18, 2015.
ADDENDUM TO OBITUARY
As a 100-year-old former truck driver, logger, gas station operator, "excavationist" (bulldozer operator extraordinaire) and waterworks technician, Frank White released the follow-up to his Milk Spills and One-Log Loads: Memories of a Pioneer Truck Driver (Harbour $32.95) that was published in spring of 2014 when he was only 99. He was accompanied to the book launch for his second, 400-page volume of memoirs, That Went By Fast (Harbour $32.95) by his 97-years-young wife, Edith Iglauer, author of Fishing with John.
"Frank White started writing the story of his life as a pioneer BC truck driver in 1974 when he was only sixty. His boisterous yarn in Raincoast Chronicles about wrangling tiny trucks overloaded with huge logs down steep mountains with no brakes won the Canadian Media Club award for Best Magazine Feature and was reprinted so many times everyone urged him to write more. He started in his spare time but kept having so many new adventures he didn't finish until this year--his hundredth under heaven (which he doesn't believe in). Although Frank set out to tell the story of his life in transportation, starting in the horse and buggy age and chronicling the growth of trucking in the BC freighting and logging industries, Milk Spills and One-Log Loads is much more than that: this is a vivid account of life as working people lived it on Canada's west coast during the rough-and-tumble years of the early twentieth century."
The first book appeared on the BC Bestseller List in January of 2014. Both books were edited and co-written with the assistance of Howard White, his son and publisher."