 Born in Fort Collins, Colorado, White was the younger son of Maude Elizabeth (Burger) and Alpha Albert White, neither of whom attended high school.He was raised in the nearby town of Wellington, where he obtained his high school diploma in 1934.After graduating at the top of his tiny high school class of six, White attended the University of Colorado in Boulder on a scholarship, offered to all Colorado high school valedictorians, as his older brother Sam had done.