Talk:William Francis Whitman Jr.

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Bill Whitman, 92, Is Dead; Scoured the Earth for Rare Fruit

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Article Tools Sponsored By By DAVID KARP Published: June 4, 2007

William F. Whitman Jr., a self-taught horticulturist who became renowned for collecting rare tropical fruits from around the world and popularizing them in the United States, died Wednesday at his home in Bal Harbour, Fla. He was 92. Skip to next paragraph Noel Ramos

William F. Whitman Jr. in front of his famous mangosteen tree in 1999.

Mr. Whitman, who had suffered strokes and a heart attack, died in his sleep, his wife, Angela, said.

Among rare-fruit devotees, Bill Whitman, as he was known, was hailed as the only person to have coaxed a mangosteen tree into bearing fruit outdoors in the continental United States. Native to Southeast Asia, mangosteen is notoriously finicky and cold-sensitive.

That did not deter Mr. Whitman, whose garden is propitiously situated between Biscayne Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, minimizing the danger of catastrophic freezes. (Mangosteen is the most prominent of the exotic “superfruits” like goji and noni, which are made into high-priced beverages from imported purées.)

Mr. Whitman managed to cultivate other fastidiously tropical species like rambutan and langsat, and he was recognized as the first in the United States to popularize miracle fruit, a berry that tricks the palate into perceiving sour tastes as sweet.

In pursuit of rare fruit, “Bill was a monomaniac,” said Stephen S. Brady, his doctor and friend, who traveled with him. “He’d hear about a fruit tree, and pursue it like a pit bull to the ends of the earth.”

Richard J. Campbell, senior curator of tropical fruit at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Coral Gables, Fla., went on many of these expeditions. “When people said, ‘You can’t grow that in Florida,’ he took that as a challenge,” Mr. Campbell said.

William Francis Whitman Jr. was born in 1914 in Chicago, a son of William Sr. and Leona Whitman. His father owned a printing company in Chicago and added to his fortune by developing real estate in Miami.

Bill and his brothers helped pioneer surfing in Florida, and he was inducted into the East Coast Surfing Hall of Fame in 1998.

After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Mr. Whitman, along with his brother Dudley, built and patented an underwater camera that provided video for several movies, including “The Sea Around Us,” which won an Academy Award for best documentary in 1952.

Mr. Whitman’s devotion to collecting and propagating rare species and varieties stemmed from a sailing trip to Tahiti, where he became enchanted by the fruit. Mr. Whitman was a founder of the Rare Fruit Council International, based in Miami, and was its first president, from 1955 to 1960. Foremost among the fruit he introduced to Florida was Kohala longan.

A book collecting his articles, “Five Decades with Tropical Fruit,” was published in 2001.

His first wife, Dorthea, from whom he was divorced, died a few years ago.

Besides his wife, Angela, he is survived by three children from his first marriage, Christopher, of Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica; Eric, of Palm City, Fla., and Pamela Mattson, of San Diego; his brothers, Dudley, of Bal Harbour, and Stanley, of Miami Shores, Fla.; and seven grandchildren.