William Green '49 Honored for 50 Years at QC

In the same week the Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel, Bill Green began his teaching career at Queens College. Fortunately for QC’s English Department, unlike Ford’s product, Bill was built to last.

When Green arrived at the Flushing campus to begin his teaching career in the fall of 1957, he was actually returning to Queens College. A 1949 graduate, he had begun music studies in 1944 only to have them interrupted by a wartime stint in the Navy, where he played clarinet in the Navy Band. Among his assignments was playing in the funeral procession accompanying the body of President Franklin Roosevelt as it was transported by carriage from Union Station to the White House.

At the 2007 Faculty & Staff Assembly, as he received the first Annual Queens College Special Service Award in recognition of his long tenure with the English Department, Green confided to the LeFrak Hall audience that, had he been a better musician, he might have spent the last 50 years teaching music at Queens College rather than English. But, he explained, when your father is a virtuoso clarinet player in the NBC Symphony under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, it’s a very high standard to meet.

As President James Muyskens observed in his introductory remarks, as the college’s longest-serving faculty member, Green has set his own high standard as “a popular and well-respected teacher and fine scholar” as well as in service to the greater Queens College community as “one of the founders and guiding spirits of the Friends of the Queens College Library” and as an instrumental figure in creating the position of Poet Laureate for the Borough of Queens.

Accepting his award to vigorous applause, Green addressed an attentive audience that included QC’s newest faculty members. He recalled how, under the mentorship of Robert Hamilton Ball, he took a position in the “theater wing” of the QC English department, became involved with international theater organizations, and ultimately became president of the International Federation for Theater Research. His tenure in that office, he explained, was during the height of the Cold War and taught him a valuable lesson: “I had to learn how to be politically correct.”

He then acknowledged Oscar James Campbell, his mentor during his graduate English studies at Columbia University, and thanked him for giving him a simile by which he says he’s guided his career: “A college professor is like an athlete who is running a relay race, and he passes on the baton from person to person.” His voice beginning to break, he finished: “And I’ve tried to do that.”

Regaining his composure, the drama scholar and self-described Shakespearian offered a dramatic parting quote. Paraphrasing the Bard from his play Antony and Cleopatra, Green proclaimed, “Age cannot wither me, nor custom stale my infinite variety.”