Jean L. White

Jean Wallace White, 107, passed away on Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at Morristown Medical Center after a brief illness. Born on August 9, 1918, she grew up in Newark with her three younger sisters and spent summers at Cranberry Lake in Byram Township, New Jersey, where she developed her lifelong love of swimming and bike riding.

A 1940 graduate of Duke University, where she majored in English and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Jean had a deep passion for books and learning. After graduate work in library studies at the University of Michigan, she worked for several years in the Newark Public Library system. During World War II, she answered her country’s call by joining the U.S. Navy as an ensign in the WAVES, serving from 1943 to 1946. It was in 1943, while working in the naval office in lower Manhattan, that she met her future husband, Lieutenant Frederick Lupton White. They married in September 1946 and settled in Chatham, where they raised three sons.

Jean volunteered for many years at the Chatham Public Library, reading stories to children, and was an active member of Ogden Memorial Presbyterian Church since the late 1940s, serving as a deacon in the 1970s. In 2001, she moved to Juniper Village in Chatham, where she celebrated her 100th birthday in August 2018. She was faithfully cared for since 2009 by Cynthia Hubilla and several other Visiting Angels.

Jean will be dearly missed for her resilience, courage, faith, humor, and deep love of family and friends. She is survived by her three sons, Donald of New York City, Richard and his wife, Kerstin, of Newmarket, New Hampshire, and Peter of Rye, New Hampshire, and four grandchildren, Janine of London, England, Lisa of Newmarket, New Hampshire, Windy of Brooklyn, New York, and David and his wife, Ming, of Chengdu, China. Her devoted husband, Frederick, predeceased her in 1996, as did her granddaughter, Cordelia.