Former concrete company owner cements future for some Virginia Tech students

A $10 million donation created the Preston and Catharine White Endowed Diversity Scholarship, the university announced Tuesday.

It’s a program that will expand to provide scholarships between $5,000 and $7,500 for as many as 80 students annually.

First-year computer science student Elroi Elias is one of the first recipients. Being a first-generation college student and the oldest sibling in her family, Elias said she is “something of a guinea pig” when it comes to college.

“I don’t want to leave a big burden, and this scholarship allows me to just focus hard on school,” Elias said in the announcement. “My biggest fear was to be in debt, and this scholarship eases that.”

Preston White, a former university Board of Visitors member and past owner of Century Concrete, said he decided to start the fund after considering three founding members from the early days of his firm that now employs more than 500 people.

“I ate lunch with them, worked with them, took them home and picked them up,” White said in the announcement. “I got to know them pretty well but never thought about the fact that I had a college degree and they didn’t have high school degrees, it was just where we were in life.”

That was 57 years ago, when White started Century Concrete with one excavator and those three employees: B.C. Cross, Earl Carter and Sylvester Riddick, each middle-aged, Black men who worked for years with White. 

“They were hard workers and never missed a day and put a lot into it,” White said in the announcement. “I never really thought a lot about it — until my wife and I got talking.”

When they sold Century Concrete in spring 2022, White and his wife, Catharine, discussed how they could make a difference by helping others, and circled back to those three hardworking employees who helped set the business foundation.

“We thought, if we give back why not give back to honor people who never had the same opportunities we did?” she said in the announcement, thinking of those three early employees. “They went to school before integration, and certainly before college was as welcoming to them as it might be now.”

Preston White, class of 1963, and family have given more than $21 million to the university across various programs, the announcement said.

This scholarship fund, their largest donation, adds to Virginia Tech diversity efforts, a top university priority.

“I look at the divisions of all the people in this country and the world, and a lot of it comes from lack of education, probably the bulk of it,” White said in the announcement. “If we can educate everybody, things will change.”

The Whites’ namesake scholarship will prioritize in-state applicants who as high schoolers attended Virginia Tech’s Black College Institute, as well as students seeking to participate in Black student groups, plus aspiring engineers, construction and real estate students.

Among a mix of other possibilities, some scholarship students could go on to jobs with Champion Concrete.

White is otherwise involved in educational advocacy efforts nowadays, according to the announcement. But the Virginia Tech legacy continues at the company he started. 

“The president’s a Hokie, our vice president of operations is a Hokie, and I would say half of our project managers are Hokies,” White said. “We recruit heavily at Virginia Tech.”