Jake White - RIP - 10/04/21

By Walt Van Zant Jake White died this evening (Oct 4th) at Kaiser hospital at age 79. He had surgery of the throat 3 weeks ago. They discovered that his cancer had spread further and that he would probably die from cancer within 6 months to a year. However, the effects of the surgery did him in before that. Jake had been getting weaker and weaker prior to the surery and had lost a fair amount of weight because it was very difficult to swallow. Jake, John Clary, Rich Stiller, and David Garcia joined our club in probably the late 1970s and immediately made us an excellent running club. As a 40+ runner, he ran a marathon in 2:34:07 and had many other fast times at distances ranging from 800 meters to 30K. He began coaching with me at Wilcox in his mid 40s and was very successful in coaching their distance runners. He laid out of coaching for a few years and then moved to Mitty high school where he was very successful in coaching their distance runners. Finally, he landed at Lynbrook high school as their head track and cross country coach. He consistently had very powerful teams. He retired a few months ago due to his weakness. I enjoyed my Sunday breakfasts with him during the past few years. I will greatly miss him. One other thing, a Lynbrook student wrote a very nice article about him on 5/26/21. See https://lhsepic.com/10082/features/tracking-coach-jakes-long-running-and-coaching-career/