The Post Online - Greens donate $580K to University of Alabama

May 19, 2008

Greens leave $580K to University of Alabama

SAND ROCK – With heartfelt emotion and tears in his eyes, Dale Harding read last week from the will of longtime family friend Louise Green, who passed away in May 2007.

“I will and direct that my said personal representative pay and deliver the entire remaining net proceeds of my estate to the Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama, to be used only … for the establishment, support and maintenance … of a scholarship fund at the University of Alabama to be known as the M. Jack Green and G. Louise Green Scholarship Fund.”

Standing inside the home where Green lived almost her entire life, Harding read on for a few more minutes, between emotional pauses, then presented representatives of the University with a check for $582,905.

The money will be used to provide academic scholarships for students who wish to attend the Capstone and major in a field chosen by Ms. Green and her brother, who died in 1996 -- nursing, mathematics, physical education or home economics.
Ms. Green's will stipulated the funds made be available exclusively to male or female students from Cherokee, DeKalb and Etowah counties. According to her instructions, the scholarship will be available for up to four years, provided academic requirements are met.

“I assure you that the University of Alabama will be good stewards of this money,” said Associate Director of Planned Giving William A. Hughes, who traveled to Sand Rock on Tuesday to receive the check from Harding. “The scholarships will be awarded according to her wishes, and we certainly appreciate her generosity and this wonderful gift.”

“They were very nice people who worked really hard and didn't throw money away,” Harding said of the Greens. “I remember her lying clothes to dry on the bushes in front of the house, to save money.”

Harding, who Ms. Green chose as executor of her will because of the lifelong ties between their two families, said the Green siblings' decision about what to do with their estate was probably an easy one.

“They both attended the University of Alabama in the 1940s and got their master's degrees,” Harding said. “Their mother was a nurse from Mobile, who moved to the area to help birth her sister's baby. Her sister wanted her child to be born in a log cabin. While she was here she met Hiram Green, and they married and had their first child, Louise, in 1920.”

Harding reached back over six decades to offer one example of the closeness the two families shared.

“She got on the train with my father when he was 12 years old and rode with him all the way to the hospital in Chattanooga when his appendix ruptured,” Harding said. “And then she stayed with him and brought him back.”

Harding said “Ms. Louise,” like her brother after her, came back to Cherokee County to teach school upon earning a college degree.

“The last position she held was as home economics teacher at Cedar Bluff in the 1970s. Then she retired after 30 years to take care of her mother, who died in 1981,” he said. “And he was a teacher in Gadsden. He came back to this county to teach at Sand Rock and coach football. He had played football at Cherokee County High School in the late 1930s.”

Harding said Mr. Green was divorced with no children and Ms. Louise never married. With no other family members to leave their estates to after they were gone, they decided to make sure their years and years of hard work could be used to advance the lives of others.

"They were the classiest folks around," Harding smiled.