Wheelock Whitney, Jr.

Who is Wheelock Whitney, Jr.?

Wheelock "Whee" Whitney, Jr. is a Minneapolis businessman, educator, sports team executive and owner, philanthropist and politician who attended Phillips Andover and Yale University with George H.W. Bush. He and Bush were both members of Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale. Whitney was a successful investment banker from 1957 until 1972, when he left the industry to teach at the Carlson School of Business.

Whitney was the 1964 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate from Minnesota, losing to Eugene McCarthy, and the Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota in 1982, losing to Rudy Perpich.

Whitney married Irene Hixon on August 21, 1948. They provided aid to Reverend Vernon Johnson, who pioneered the method of using an intervention to confront alcoholics and substance abusers so as to get them professional help for their addictions. They created the Johnson Institute after Reverend Johnson helped Irene Whitney through an intervention. Irene Whitney died of lung cancer in 1986. In 1990 Whitney married Penny Lewis, a professional horse trainer, from whom he was divorced in 1994. In 2005, he married Kathleen A. Blatz, the former Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court.