Bucknell Athletics Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 2010
- Class:
- 1983
David White epitomized the Art Gulden era of track and field at Bucknell, entering the program as a walk-on but progressively developing into an elite athlete during a glory period for Bison distance men. White's career overlapped with other Bucknell Hall-of-Fame distance runners, such as Bill Reifsnyder, Mark Hulme, Rick Sayre and Brian Harshman, but his record stood up with all of them, and he was elected team captain as a senior.
White became a dominant college runner by his junior year and qualified for the NCAA Indoor Championships in the 1,000 meters in 1982, where he finished fourth in his heat and had the 12th-fastest time in the preliminaries. He was part of five East Coast Conference championship teams and also competed in the 1982 NCAA Cross Country Championship, where he was the only middle-distance runner on a Bison squad that finished 12th in the nation. In ECC Championship competition he was runner-up in the 800 and 1,500 meters.
White, a Cooperstown, N.Y., saw his name littered across the Bucknell record book. Individually, he broke Hall-of-Famer George Buckheit's school record in the 1,500 meters by four seconds at Penn State in 1983. His time of 3:44.95 was bettered by Hulme later that season. He also ranked third all-time at graduation in the indoor 1,000 meters, third in both the indoor and outdoor 800 meters, and he consistently ran sub-4:05 mile equivalents.
Also a gifted and reliable relay runner, in 1982 White was the lead man on a 4x800-meter relay that set a school outdoor record (7:31.84) that held up for 30 years. At the 1983 Penn Relays he was a part of three school-record relays in the same week. He led off the 4x800 relay that tied the record from the previous year, he anchored the distance medley relay team that recorded a then-record time of 9:54.04, and he was also part of a team that set a school record in the 4x1500. White was also part of a 4x1600 team that set school and meet records at the Rutgers Relays.
White received both a master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. After spending six years in politics in Washington, D.C., where he worked with senators Bob Dole and John McCain, among other duties, he became a professor of political science and chair of the Department of Political Science and Geography at Francis Marion University. Â
