John Whitacre, 1952 – 2002: Former CEO of Nordstrom, sports booster

"You know," John Whitacre marveled to his wife as he checked a Web page recently, "I'm rowing the same speed as the Olympic rowers."

The picture would be familiar to anyone who knew the one-time college football player and former chief executive for Nordstrom. Tall as a tree and driven to excel, he was always studying, monitoring, striving.

On Monday, he had just finished rowing at a University of Washington training room when he collapsed from a heart attack. He was 50.

"I think it's fair to say that he died like an athlete," said Dr. Rick Matsen, a friend and head of the university's orthopaedics and sports-medicine department.

Although close friends remember Whitacre as a family man and rabid sports fan, most of Seattle knew him as a businessman, an energetic, yet low-profile guy who achieved what no other local executive had: He was the first non-Nordstrom to head the family business.

Like many Nordstrom managers, Whitacre started on the ground floor, selling shoes at the old University District store in 1976. He was attending the University of Washington at the time, a 6-foot-5 English major. It was there that he met Genevieve Fanfant, the daughter of a United Nations diplomat from Haiti. They married in 1976.

By the early 1980s, Whitacre was managing the Bellevue Square store when an employee suggested hiring a pianist to play for shoppers during the holiday season. It was such a success, the company put pianists in most of its stores and kept them playing year round.

In 1987, Whitacre was assigned to open the company's first store on the East Coast. He became a vice president in 1989 and over the next six years rose through the executive ranks.

Although he gave up his dreams to be a pro football player years earlier, Whitacre remained passionate about sports, particularly the Huskies, where he was an offensive tackle in college. He and his parents, Hazel and Marshall Whitacre, a retired Tacoma doctor, rarely missed a game.

Whitacre also coached his children's teams, helping daughter Stephanie get good enough to join Lehigh University's women's basketball team.

"He used to call me 'the great and powerful one,' " said Stephanie, 21, a journalism major at Lehigh. He went to nearly all of her Lakeside High School games, and those he missed he listened to on the radio.

By 1996, Whitacre had become chairman of Nordstrom's board of directors. He was named chief executive a year after that. He set about modernizing the company, including launching a $300 million Internet catalog business.

He was a popular boss, using the motivational techniques he'd learned in sports. "He'd scream and holler and jump up and down for something positive," said Jane Moore, who worked as his executive assistant for 10 years.

Moore is still pained by Whitacre's forced departure, which came during a stormy time in the company's history. Earnings had fallen, competition from other department and specialty stores was encroaching, and Whitacre's $40 million "Reinvent Yourself" campaign was failing to deliver the results he'd hoped for. He resigned in August 2000.

"There was nobody who was more imbued with the Nordstrom culture than John Whitacre," said Robert Spector, who co-wrote the book "The Nordstrom Way" in 1995. "But for all his being part of the culture, in the end his last name was not Nordstrom."

Bruce Nordstrom, the current chairman, said yesterday that

Whitacre was an important figure in helping to build the company. "We all loved him."

Whitacre rebounded by moving to London in 2001, where he managed the famed Harrods department store owned by Mohamad Al Fayed. He stayed only a year, said Genevieve, who used to travel to London every couple of weeks to join her husband.

His father's health was failing, she said, and he wanted to be near him. "John saw that window was closing."

Back in the United States, Whitacre did some consulting work and continued his community service, which involved raising money for University of Washington athletics, the United Way and Zion Preparatory Academy, an inner-city Seattle school.

He started on a fitness regimen, which eventually helped him drop 70 pounds, and he also started fixing things around the house, said son Christopher, 22, who lives in the family home in Clyde Hill.

Whitacre was no longer running a Fortune 500 company, but his pace hadn't slowed.

"That's what I thank him the most for now," Christopher said. "That ethic. That if you work hard for what you want, you'll get it."

Besides his wife and two children, survivors include his father, Marshall Whitacre; brother Jim Whitacre and sisters Kay Woodward and Betty Whitacre, all of Tacoma. His mother, Hazel Whitacre, died in July 2001.

A memorial Mass will be at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Bridget Church, 4900 N.E. 50 St., Seattle.

Shirleen Holt: 206-464-8316 or sholt@seattletimes.com.