Extracted from The Tuscaloosa News (Tuscaloosa, AL)
`Spare-Time' Painter Now Working
On Graduate Degree In Art at UA
But for an opportune breeze that wafted the pungence of
oil paints across the Capstone campus one day last fall,
Birmingham's Mrs. Mabel Nygren Greene would be on her
way to becoming an English teacher today.
Strictly a spare-time painter for many years, this
grandmother of two had every intention of taking a master's
degree in English when she chanced to stroll past Garland
Hall, home of the University's art department.
The familiar sights and smells that lured her into enrolling
in ``just one'' painting course, but she soon found that, like
eating salted peanuts, you can't take just one. Her
curriculum was changed accordingly and she is now working
toward a graduate degree in art.
Work on Exhibit
The high point of Mrs. Greene's art career came this week
when a one-man show of 28 of her paintings opened in the
Alabama Union Building on campus. The show will be up
through Saturday.
If earning a graduate degree when you're a widow with four
grown daughters sounds ambitious, consider the fact that she
never went to college at all until 1960. In that year she entered
Alabama College, to receive a B.S. degree three years later.
For high scholarship there she was elected to membership in
Alpha Lambda Chi and Kappa Pi honor societies.
Ms. Green[e]'s husband, the late Mr. Hartwell Alexander Greene,
was Comptroller of T.C.I. for many years. After his death she decided
``not to become a social burden on my children,'' and so set about
keeping busy, a task in which she had had a lot of practice.
Girl Scout Leader
While making a home and raising four daughters with one hand,
with the other she was a leader in Birmingham's Girl Scout movement
for 25 years. Born and reared in Birmingham, she graduated from
Woodlawn High School and went immediately to work to help
support several younger children in her family.
A scholarship to a local college was offered, but helping put
bread on the the family table took precedence over personal desires.
A backward look gives her no regrets about missing out on college
in her youth: ``I'm having more fun going to school now than if
I'd gone when I was young.''
Mrs. Greene commutes daily to the University campus from her
top-of-Shades Mountain home where she maintains a studio.
Her daughters are Mrs. Joseph W. Ruffner and Mrs. Jan E.
Oesterling, both of Birmingham, Marian Greene, assistant service
engineer for I.B.M. in Atlanta; and Virginia Greene, a junior at Duke
University majoring in mathematics and science. This summer
Virginia is doing research in psychology at the University Medical Center.
Two grandchildren, obviously the apples of her eye, are Alex and
Missy Ruffner, aged 3 and 2 respectively.
Thursday, August 13, 1964