Gerry Greene

NATIONAL PHILANTHROPY DAY: Volunteer of the Year

Volunteer opts for law after engineering career

By Leyla Shokoohe / Photo by Tina Gutierrez

“The second-career lawyer – it’s a weird retirement plan,” said Gerry Greene, a volunteer attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Cincinnati for the last 18 years, who was named the 2020 Volunteer of the Year by the Cincinnati chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Greene’s first act would have been enough for anyone: more than 30 years as a highly regarded engineer at Procter & Gamble, the last seven of which were spent traveling the globe for work; a long marriage to wife Kate; father to three daughters. The international trekking was pleasurable, but intense, and he retired at 59, filling his days on the green and on the softball diamond.

“My wife asked me the $64,000 question: ‘What are you going to do with yourself? You can’t play golf and softball all the time,’ ” he said. “I thought, ‘I don’t know, that sounds like a good plan to me.’ But she was right.”

Greene’s interest in the law went back to his time in the military, when he served as prosecutor and defense in courts-martial for six months.

“I found out that I really kind of liked it, but my career was engineering, so that’s what I did,” he said. “So the more I got to thinking about it, [I thought,] ‘You know, I’ve always had this interest in law, I got the time, why don’t I go to law school?’ ”

Go he did. He attended the University of Dayton, which he found to be more receptive to non-traditional students, and “absolutely loved it,” graduating at age 62.

“I really wanted to try to do some good for the community, and one of my neighbors happened to be on the board of Legal Aid, and said, ‘Why don’t you go down and talk to them?’ ”

Greene met with Legal Aid director Mary Asbury and offered them an unbeatable deal: to volunteer his time.

“The joke is, either that was a good idea, or I needed a psych eval, one of the two,” he said.

Greene was encouraged to pick his own area of practice, and again, Kate was a guiding light. When she was employed at the YWCA, he had become familiar with their mission, which includes combating domestic violence.

“I got to understand the back ground and the horrible dynamics of domestic violence,” Greene said. “I asked to work in family law and take domestic violence cases.”

Greene, who turned 81 in September, will celebrate 18 years with Legal Aid in October.

“I was very curious how someone who has spent their life as an engineer was going to approach the practice of family law,” said Kelly Malone, managing attorney of family and im migration law with Legal Aid.

“Because it can be a very imprecise area. Clients are going through really emotional, scary times in their lives. I didn’t know if an engineer would have the kind of real empathy and patience it takes to help people when they’re so traumatized. But his innate kindness came through. He’s so gen tle and patient with all of his clients, and he always has been. I don’t think it’s something he had to learn.”

Greene’s only legal experience has been with Legal Aid. While not technically on staff, he is the only volunteer attorney with his own office at their headquarters, and has a Legal Aid business card. He often takes younger attorneys under his wing, and remains a trusted confidante for clients after their cases have been closed.

“Among all the attorneys, I would say he’s got the most loyal clients,” said Malone.

“There’s one woman who, every single year, in the late fall, without fail, she sends him a gift card to a restaurant and a beautiful card. And he will never keep that gift card for himself. He always gives it to me and says, ‘Can we use this toward our team holiday lunch?’ ”

Greene’s undergraduate days at the University of Detroit Mercy, a school founded on Jesuit principles, helped build his empathy and compassion.

“I’m very much influenced by the Jesuits, who are very community-oriented,” he said.

Giving back to the community is a trait he and his wife instilled in their children, and one they both strived to model throughout their lives.

“I’ll give you a quote which a friend shared with me: ‘The worth of a life is not the wealth you’ve accumulated, or the position you’ve attained, but the footprints you leave behind,’ ” he said. “It’s kind of an inspiration. We’ve always felt like we need to give back to the community, and we’ve kind of lived our lives that way.”

In addition to his work with the Legal Aid Society, Greene has carved out time to volunteer on the boards of the Taft Museum of Art and Purcell Marian High School. Again, Kate inspired these connections.

It is important to note his wife’s influence on Greene. Married for 54 years, Kathleen “Kate” Mary O’Connor passed away last year after a battle with cancer.

“She fought it very bravely for two and a half years, and unfortunately it turned on her,” he said. “All three girls and I were with her when she had to go to the ICU for the last 11 days. We were with her the whole time, so that was a blessing.”

They met at a football game at Purdue, where Greene was in graduate school. The pair never lived in the same city before they married; Kate was teaching in Indianapolis when they met, and then Greene went into the Army.

“I initially went to Fort Belvoir, Va.,” he said. “So we were separated and then I actually traded assignments with another officer to get to Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., which was as close as I could get to Indianapolis. I used to do 800-mile round trips on three-day weekends to go see her.”

A tenacious woman, Kate would also trek out to see Greene.

“The only way she could get to St. Louis was on one of these puddlejumper planes,” said Greene, “and she was the only woman on the plane – [the rest] were army recruits. And she said, ‘That was an adventure.’ ”

They moved on from his military career to P&G in 1965, landing in Cincinnati.

Kate served as a docent at the Taft. Through her work there, which involved an outreach artist program at local schools, she and Greene became acquainted with Sister Janet Linz, who went on to become co-director of the Lavatus Powell Program at Purcell Marian. The Greenes admired both the nun and the program, dedicated to improving the graduation rate of underserved students.

“We got involved doing that and, gosh, we’ve been doing that for over 20 years,” Greene said. “And then they asked me to be on the board, and so I gladly accepted.”

Through Kate’s work at the Taft, Greene became involved in the museum’s annual fundraiser, first serving as manual labor before he was eventually asked to join the board. He was on a few committees, including Buildings and Grounds and Governance.

“The joke here is, I missed a governance committee meeting one time, and they nominated me to be chair of the board,” he said.

He’s currently in his third three-year term, after joining the board in 2009 and becoming chairman in 2012.

“I was new, he was new, and I've never had a better boss in my life,” said Deborah Emont Scott, the Louise Semple Taft president and CEO of the Taft. “I go to meetings sometimes with other CEOs and they roll their eyes when they talk about their directors, and I just consider myself so fortunate to have someone like Gerry volunteer so much of his time to the Taft.”

Greene still gets to flex his engineering muscles occasionally. When rehabilitation began on the Lytle Tunnel (which runs underneath Lytle Park, directly across from the Taft), Greene joined Scott for meetings with ODOT to ensure the Taft, a Registered Historic Landmark, and its fragile, valuable collection and amenities, would not suffer negative repercussions from the construction.

“Gerry made it all go so much more smoothly than it would otherwise,” Scott said. “He’s always in a good mood, happy to be helping. … He tells a good story, he’s a great audience, he is kind and caring, empathic, and has respect for all people he encounters.”

In addition to the AFP honor, this year Greene also received the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation Presidential Award for Pro Bono Service.

“I’m delighted,” he said. “I don’t do it for recognition or for that reason, but I’m delighted to get it and I’m delighted to shine a light on some of the organiza tions that I volunteer for, because I think they deserve it.”

And so does he.