Remembering Emily L. White

Dear Friends, Family, and Future Trustees,

With profound sadness, I share that my sister and our co-founder, Emily L. White, passed away on June 2, 2026, at the age of 42, after living with cancer for three years, with the courage and grace that defined her.

Back 40 began in the months after Emily’s diagnosis. We started it together because she wanted to be deliberate about the time ahead and what it could mean for other people. The work we have done since—the conversations, the first grants, the slow process of figuring out what we believe—carries her fingerprints throughout.

Emily was a writer. She spent her publishing years on the top floor of the Flatiron Building, then came home to Ridgefield, where she practiced her craft in another form: the hundreds of handwritten cards and letters she sent to friends and family. They were among the things her circle knew her by, and remain a piece of her many still hold. She believed stories connect people, and she lived it every day. It is why the Connecticut Writing Project at Fairfield University received one of our first grants last year.

She was also, from the start, drawn outdoors. A semester studying and hiking around New Zealand, weeks kayaking off the coast of Chile, summers under the stars at Camp Jewell: Emily sought the kinds of experiences we hope every Back 40 grant can offer a young person. Our foundation’s name comes from the Back 40 at Camp Jewell—the wooded acres where she explored, pushed herself, and grew into the adventurous and kind person she became. That is why Camp Jewell YMCA received the other inaugural grant.

The principles we set out in last year’s trustee letter—start with people, seek the overlooked, think long-term, give with joy—are no longer abstractions. They are Emily’s spirit, which drives Back 40 forward.

Onward in her memory,

William L. White