Deceased November 27, 2016
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In Memory
Samuel Greene was born in 1927 in New London, Conn., where he spent his childhood. He died Nov. 27, 2016, at home in Brunswick, Maine. Sam entered Amherst as a freshman in 1945. Two years later he enlisted in the army and served in Germany for two years as a medical corpsman. He then returned to Amherst and graduated in the 1951 class.
Sam was devoted to music. He sang in the Amherst Choir, and classical music from his radio seeped into the Chi Psi hallways. He was a fine tenor who later performed in church choirs and often sang simply for pleasure.
In 1953 Sam married Martha Payne. They had five daughters: Meg, Georgia, Julie, Sarah and Lydia. Sam had a long career as teacher, student adviser and administrator in prep schools. He taught math and coached the cross-country team at Mount Herman School in Gill, Mass. He was headmaster at Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh from 1966 to 1976, where he was described as a “visionary leader.” Under his guidance, Shady Side was changed into a “co-educational school with an ethnically and racially diverse student body.”
Late in his life, Sam connected with Phyllis Gansz, a teaching colleague he had known many years earlier and all but forgotten. Both now unattached, they had a brief courtship, married and moved to Yarmouth, then Brunswick, Maine. They grew fond of tramping along the Maine coast and ultimately moved to a retirement cottage within easy reach of the shore.
Bill Neill ’51