Charles H. Whitebread, a popular professor at USC's law school whose wit and incisive observations on the U.S. Supreme Court and how to survive law school helped him develop a national following, has died. He was 65.
Whitebread died Sept. 16 of lung cancer at his home in Santa Monica, the university announced.
Since 1981, he had taught at USC and was a nationally respected expert on criminal law, the Supreme Court and juvenile law, according to USC.
"He was a life force," said Robert Rasmussen, dean of the USC Gould School of Law. "So many alums say their USC law experience was shaped and furthered by Charlie Whitebread. He had a true passion for teaching, scholarship, his students and justice."
Evidence of the professor's popularity can be found in a Facebook group called "Charlie Whitebread Rocks My World." It has more than 1,600 members, some of whom discovered him through lectures he often gave for a popular bar-exam preparation course.
The son of a dentist, Whitebread was a product of Princeton University and Yale Law School. He once called his background "pampered, preppy" and said his charmed life made him aware of his responsibility to give back.
He did so in part by pledging $100,000 in 1996 to found a drop-in facility at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood that offers life-saving services to homeless and at-risk youths. Eventually, Whitebread donated more than $280,000 to the center and helped raise an additional $230,000, said Jim Key, a spokesman for the Gay and Lesbian Center.
Called the Jeff Griffith Youth Center, it was named for a barely literate 17-year-old runaway whom Whitebread befriended. Griffith died at 32.
The center, which helps 50 to 70 people a day, provides meals, clothing, counseling and other services, Key said.
Wearing his ubiquitous bow tie, Whitebread traveled extensively to present roundups of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions to judges, said George Lefcoe, a USC law professor and good friend of Whitebread.
"He might have been the most popular law lecturer in the country," Lefcoe said. "In his annual summaries . . . he was like the painless dentist -- he would tell the judges what the court was up to without them having to suffer."
Whitebread also had visited more than 80 law schools to talk about how to succeed in the first year of law school. His advice was rooted in common sense, such as "stay positive" and "focus on the big picture."
