Recalling his college days as a classmate of Richard Whitney '11, Richard Clark Floyd '11, General Chairman of the 25th Reunion Committee of the Class of 1936, last night said: "He was very well liked and has been popular among his classmates ever since."
Five times president of the New York Stock Exchange and once czar of Wall Street, Richard Whitney entered Harvard at the age of twenty, having graduated from Groton, where he rowed and played football. His first year he rowed number four on the Freshman crew, and in 1910, as a Sophomore, he made the varsity crew, rowing in the bow.
Finishing college in three years, Whitney worked one year for Kidder, Peabody & Co., a Boston brokerage house. After joining the Potter, Choate, & Prentice Co. of New York, he purchased in 1912 a seat on the Exchange. Later he was with Cummings & Marckwald, which was changed in 1916 to the Richard Whitney Co. During the War he worked for the Food Administration in Washington. At the twenty-fifth reunion of his class he was acknowledged one of its most prominent members by being chosen one of the two speakers at the banquet.
Now indicted on charges of grand larceny, Whitney is said to have misappropriated $108,000 as a co-trustee of a trust fund belonging to his wife's family, Sheldon by name, and benefiting among others Harvard University.
It was gathered from University officials that when George R. Sheldon died almost twenty years ago, Harvard was told that it stood a slight chance of receiving anything from the will, since the estate was inextricably tied up with Mr. Sheldon's family. Thus the University has lost nothing by Whitney's alleged theft.
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