William Plunkett White Jr., 82, a dreamer and engineer who made opening bottles of ketchup a more pleasant experience and changed the food bottling industry in the process, died Friday, April 14, in his Grayslake home of complications related to a fall.
Mr. White was an executive of the White Cap Co., a Chicago vacuum closures business founded by his father, when he discovered in the 1940s that double-rolling the metal on the twist-off caps used by baby food and ketchup manufacturers made them easier to open and close.
“The genius was that you could twist it off with a quarter-turn and twist it back on with a quarter-turn and reseal it,” said Dan Bialka, manager of technical service for White Cap. Before Mr. White’s invention, he said, metal caps had to be pried from ketchup bottles. “You just couldn’t put the thing back on anymore,” Bialka.
The “side-seal” cap opened a whole range of food-storing possibilities. Baby food could kept in glass jars instead of cans; the shelf life of food products was extended; and food containers became easier to mass produce.
White Cap grew quickly, but, like many small businesses, it soon was stifled by lack of capital. It was sold to Continental Can Co. in 1956, and Mr. White became a consultant in 1958.
Born in Connecticut, he was raised in Glencoe. He earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Notre Dame in 1939 and sought graduate degrees in business, mathematics and psychology at the University of Chicago.
He built an ice cream parlor in the kitchen of his home, collected antique cash registers and had a lifelong fascination with exotic automobiles. He also evidently had a good eye for investments: He paid $5 for a 1931 Model-T Ford in 1956, and from there built a car collection worth $6 million.
He rebuilt the cars himself, putting thousands of hours of work into each one.
When a 1994 fire ripped through the big red barn on his property that had become a museum dedicated to his cars, Mr. White had acquired a 1912 Rolls Royce London-to-Edinburgh Silver Ghost, a 1932 Lincoln limousine and a 1965 Cadillac Landau-Brougham limousine, part of a fleet that numbered about 80.
Many of the rarest cars were destroyed. All were uninsured, a precaution deemed too costly.
“He said, `It’s like losing seven of my children,’ ” said his son, William P. III.
In addition to his son, Mr. White is survived by his wife, Marylin; four daughters, Pamela Ficarella, Kathleen C. White, Cynthia A. White and Patricia M. Mears; a stepson, James V. Davis; two stepdaughters, Mary P. Bagnall and Jolene Acker; a sister, Alice Barr; two brothers, Robert and Roger ; six grandchildren; and eight step-grandchildren.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Tuesday at St. Mary Catholic Church, 22333 W. Erhart Rd., Mundelein.
