White: Not him. But if you go back one or two generations, the White family owned the Spring Village and Glenallan Mills in Winchendon, and the Jaffrey Mills in New Hampshire. The family also had a mill in White Valley, Mass., which was flooded for the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s. I remember reading about my Uncle Nelson going down there on the train.

Manning: When you were growing up, was your father very busy with the Spring Village Mill?

White: He was always down at the mill, my mother was up here at the house, and I, quite often, was down in Spring Village playing with all the kids. As a business, the mill did well during World War II, and made it through the Korean War, but things wound down after that. One day, while my father was driving by the mill, he told my brother Jody, ‘When you grow up, this mill isn't going to be here anymore.'

Manning: Did you ever go into the mill?

White: I went into the mill itself a few times. I remember watching the workers hand-shovel coal into a giant furnace. The entire work area was extremely hot. I also remember that the noise from the machinery inside the mill was incredible. There were supporting beams in the back of the building to keep the mill from shaking too much when the looms were running. Since I was one of the White kids, some of the workers would pat me on the head and say, ‘Hi, how are you?' Naturally, I received a warm reception.

Manning: Did you visit your father at the mill and watch what he was doing?

White: Yes. He was usually doing paperwork. His office was where the post office is currently located. He had a big safe behind his desk. I don't know what happened to that safe, but his office desk is here in the house.

Manning: Did he talk much about the mill?

White: I never got involved in talking with him about the mill or the details of the business. I was off in my own world with my friends.

Manning: What was your family's relationship with the workers and their families?

White: As far as I know, his generation didn't mingle with the people that lived in Spring Village to the extent that I did. My father would drive me down to school in the morning, leave me off, and I'd usually walk back home after school.

Manning: So the other kids walked to school, but you didn't.

White: The other kids lived much closer to the school. I was almost two miles away. I don't think I ever walked to school in the morning.

Manning: Was it different for you? I mean, you rode in the car to school in the morning, and the other kids walked.

White: I never felt there was any social class distinction.

Manning: You told me that you went off to a private school when you were about 13. Why didn't you go to private school right from the start?

White: I don't know. I asked my Aunt Elaine that question once. That generation had a private tutor commuting from Orange (Massachusetts) to Winchendon by train. She taught the family children and some other kids in a building owned by the mill. Starting at the middle school grades, they all went away to boarding school. My parents divorced when I was about 16 years old, and my mother moved back to Wellesley. My sister went with her, but I stayed here.

Manning: Did you want to stay because you wanted to be with your father, or because you wanted to be in Winchendon?

White: Mostly I wanted to stay in my own house, and I wanted to be with all my friends: Larry LaRochelle, Buddy Flint and the rest of the gang.

Manning: So when you went off to private school, was that a disappointment? Would you have preferred to finish school in Winchendon?

White: Well, when I started the sixth grade at the private school, I hardly knew the difference between a noun and a verb. I had to repeat the sixth grade to catch up. It was unbelievable what I hadn't learned in elementary school in Winchendon. They taught the basics, some math, reading and writing, but that's about all. I had to sort of pull myself up by my bootstraps, with a lot of help from my teachers, but by the time I finished middle school, I was doing very well academically.

Manning: Did you see yourself as not living in Winchendon anymore when you grew up? Did you want to go out into the world and do something big?

White: Not really. But I knew the mill was going out of business. My brothers and my sister and I became the first generation in the family to have to earn a living doing something different. And we did. It wasn't until my junior year in college that I decided I wanted to go into medicine. No one in my family had ever done that before; most had pursued business professions.

Manning: What is your specialty in the medical field?

White: Orthopedic surgery.

Manning: Where have you practiced?

White: In Williamstown, from 1972 to until 2006, when I retired.

Manning: Where did you go to medical school?

White: I toured the Ivy League. I was a Yale undergraduate, a Dartmouth medical student during the two basic science years, and then I went on to Harvard Medical School for my two clinical years.

Manning: When did you get married?

White: In 1969, to Linda, during my residency training in New York City.

Manning: How many children did you have?

White: Three, two daughters and a son, Sarah, Emily and David.

Manning: Was it a big disappointment to your father to have to sell the mill to Ray Plastics?

White: I don't know. I never discussed that with him. It probably was a disappointment, but mitigated because he saw it coming over an extended period of time.

Manning: What did he do after that?

White: It took him quite a while to wind down the mill sale and to manage all the White family property in Spring Village and near Lake Monomonac, which, by the way, is the headwater of the Millers River, which eventually travels west to the Connecticut River. He had a fairly early retirement.