FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (6/06)
Contact: Lynn Stewart, Centenary News Service, 318-869-5120

Shreveport and Santa Fe Philanthropist Edwin Frost Whited Dies at 86

	Edwin Frost Whited

SHREVEPORT, LA – Funeral services for longtime Shreveport business and civic leader Edwin Frost Whited will be held Friday, June 23, in Santa Fe, N.M., which has been Mr. Whited’s adopted home for the past few years. Services will be held at 3:30 p.m. at Holy Faith Episcopal Church, followed by a reception at the home of his daughter and son-in-law, Mary Amelia Whited-Howell and Philip B. Howell. A memorial service is to be held in Shreveport on a date to be announced. Mr. Whited, 86, died June 9 in Santa Fe, following a brief illness.

The Chief Executive Officer of Frost Whited Industries in Shreveport, he was a board member of numerous business and civic organizations and held the presidencies of the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce, the National Cotton Compress Association and the Southwestern Compress and Warehouse Association. He was named “Mr. Shreveport” by the Optimist Club in 1978 and was elected to the Centenary College Alumni Hall of Fame in 1968.

Born in Shreveport, La., on July 8, 1919, Edwin was the only child of the late Elizabeth Frost Whited and Frank Thayer Whited. He had an active life and was extremely generous with his time as well as his resources to both his birth state of Louisiana and to his adopted home of Santa Fe.
Edwin's public-spirited passions lay in the field of human services, especially crisis needs, as well as in the sciences and higher education. The endowment of the Mary Amelia Douglas-Whited Eminent Scholars Chair in Neuroscience at Centenary College (in honor of his late wife) is a most recent example of his devotion to both higher education and his family.

Edwin was the founding president of The Frost Foundation, a Charitable Trust endowed by his late grandmother, Virginia Chapelle Frost, in 1959. The Frost Foundation has been headquartered in Santa Fe since the fall of 1991, being based in Louisiana prior to that time. Mary Amelia Whited-Howell has been president of the foundation since the spring of 1994.

Edwin was CEO of Frost Whited Industries during most of his adult life. Frost Whited was a cotton warehousing company that, in later years, moved on to develop hotels and hospitals throughout Louisiana. It was formed in 1916 through the merger of the business interests of both sets of Edwin's grandparents. He was a board member of the Frost Lumber Co. until its sale to Olinkraft in the spring of 1959. The Chateau Charles Hotel in Lake Charles was developed by Frost Whited, as was the Virginia Hotel in Monroe.

Among the boards of directors on which Edwin served were the National Cotton Compress Association (president), American Red Cross, Texas Christian University, Willis-Knighton Hospital, Council for a Better Louisiana (founding member), Public Affairs Research Council of Louisiana (founding member), Centenary College, the First National Bank of Shreveport, the Shreveport Chamber of Commerce (president and life member of the Presidents' Round Table), Shreveport Airport Authority, Shreveport Opera, Shreveport Symphony, the Louisiana State Fair, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, the Shreveport Club and the Shreveport Country Club.

In addition to his daughter and son-in-law, he is survived by three grandchildren, Philip Carter Howell, Amelia Reid Howell, and Henry Frost Howell.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests a memorial donation to an organization of the donor's choice.

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