In Loving Memory of Del Roy White

Hi, our names are Syd and Jakob White. Del was our father, and we were closer to him now than ever.

 

On Saturday, April 30th, we got a call that our dad was in the hospital on life support and they would perform emergency heart surgery. We had 15 minutes to process the fact our dad's health was in danger and that the next time we saw him, he would be on life support, fifteen minutes before the official call that our dad had passed away. I will replay that phone call over and over in my mind forever.

 

Del, unfortunately, passed away on April 30th from a highly unexpected heart failure. None of us saw this coming, we had texted him the night before, and he had even been to work the previous day. We are all still in shock as we try to cope with our new reality without him. Del was an amazing man and father who was generous beyond his years. Even after getting divorced from our mother, he spent all of his time working to take care of his kids and do whatever he could from afar to give us everything he could. We all love him so much—more than he could ever comprehend.

 

Del and his son Jakob were passionate about aviation. He would tell Jakob stories of his time flying as a news helicopter pilot and his plans to build himself someday an airplane so that he could more easily come to visit his kids. He and his daughter Sydney would go scuba diving whenever they could; the two of them loved the sense of adventure and closeness that this brought them. Del tried to adapt and do whatever any of his kids were interested in, even if he sometimes didn't understand the difference between Five Nights at Freddies or My Little Pony. The moment one of them was passionate about something artistic, athletic, or even just a video game, he would shower them with praise and try everything to be supportive.

 

Del worked hard for BYU in the AV Events/OIT department; here, he touched many people's lives with his contagious fun-loving attitude and drive to work hard every day. Del worked hard so that even though he couldn't see his kids every day, they would have medical support and insurance for any hardship they may go through, as his younger two children both have type-1 diabetes. He knew that even though they were separated, he loved them more than anything and would spend the rest of his life working to take care of them. And that's exactly what he did.

 

Del was an amazing father, pilot, engineer, artist, and friend. In these unfortunate times, the responsibility has fallen to us, his oldest kids, to arrange for his funeral and memorial. We want to have him buried in the cemetery near where the two of us are living and to have an open-casket funeral so that any family or friends can choose to have one last goodbye. We are in a position where we don't know how we will be able to cover the expenses necessary to even have him buried, let alone in a way that we can all correctly say goodbye to him. If anyone is willing or able to help us find the funding we need to pay for his funeral and give him the proper burial that he deserves we would be very appreciative.