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<br />Interview with <br /> <br />Gilbert F. White <br /> <br />Q: Professor White, could we begin by talking about your early family history, <br />where you were born, your father's and mother's background? <br /> <br />A: I was born in Chicago right near the University of Chicago. We lived there <br />because my father was working for the Burlington Railroad and stationed in <br />Chicago. My mother had decided, when they moved to Chicago in the 1890s, <br />that we ought to be located near the university. She was from Atchison, <br />Kansas, and she'd gone with her mother to the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. <br />When they arrived in Chicago they stayed in a boarding hOllse out near the <br />Midway next door to the house in which the new young president of the <br />University of Chicago, just being started that year, was living. My mother <br />became enthusiastic about William Rainey Harper and his wife and thought <br />that this was a very promising institution. When she married and they moved <br />to Chicago, my father, who'd had to drop out of school and go to work at the <br />age of 12, was concerned about his children, as yet unborn, having a better <br />education than he'd received. They decided they would live near the <br />university. Our family has lived there ever since. Their planning turned out <br />to be remarkably accurate. Out of their four children, three of us attended the <br />University of Chicago and took degrees there. <br /> <br />Q: Now you went through the elementary school system and the high school <br />system in Chicago, I take it? <br /> <br />A: I went to the Ray Elementary School, the University of Chicago High School, <br />which had been founded by John Dewey, and then took three degrees at the <br />University of Chicago. <br /> <br />Q: Was there ever any question about your going to the University of Chicago? <br />Did you ever think about going anywhere else? <br /> <br />3 <br />