By Jon Singer
When former Newsday reporter and editor Robert W. Greene died on April at age 78, his death sent a shock through the journalism world. Colleagues close to Greene call the journalist a larger-than-life figure whose persistence earned Newsday two Pulitzer prizes. “Hemmingway was a tough guy,” said James Haag, one of Greene’s former students. “But Bob Greene may have been tougher.”
Greene worked at Newsday for 37 years. During his tenure, Greene traveled all the way to poppy fields in Turkey to find out where exactly the heroin sold on Long Island came from. When journalist Don Bolles was murdered in Arizona in 1976, Greene led a team of journalists to expose the organized crime ring that killed the reporter.
Greene’s most recent job was as a professor in SBU’s School of Journalism, where he inspired a new generation of budding reporters.
“We are incredibly sad,” said Dean Howard Schneider, speaking on behalf of the Journalism School. “He was such a vibrant personality.”
For the past few semesters, Professor Greene taught JRN 108, The History and Future of the American Press. This semester, despite his illness, Greene went to class in a wheelchair, with his wife, Kathleen, always at his side.
“Throughout his illness, he wound up missing only two classes,” said Schneider.
At Newsday, Greene was known as a genius of reporting. Those close to Greene remember how he would bury himself in the details of an investigation. But he was also known for “having the soul of a poet,” in the words of fellow Newsday reporter Tom Morris. “I worked on four different ‘Greene Teams,’” said Morris, who spent most of his career at Newsday covering regional planning.
It was those “Greene Teams,” crack squads of reporters led by Robert Greene, that, among other things, exposed land scandals on Long Island, earning Newsday one of its Pulitzer Prizes. At times, Greene’s work helped send corrupt political figures to jail. “This was a tough guy who had tracked down some of the top white-collar crooks and organized-crime figures in the country,” Schneider told Newsday after learning of Greene’s death.
As a college professor Greene’s accomplished career made him a legend among his students. “He was a big man that cast a big shadow, and I was happy to bask in it,” said Haag, who was one of Greene’s students when he taught at Hofstra University before coming to Stony Brook.
Aamer Qureshi is enrolled in the class Greene taught this semester. “He was incredibly passionate about the subject and it truly showed,” Qureshi said in an e-mail. “He was also brutally honest, not leaving out details of the darker side of the history of the press or of America in general - but he reminded us that, in the end, the good triumphed.”
Toward the end of Greene’s final illness, Giovanni Milone, a close friend, assisted Greene in getting to class every Monday morning at 7:30 “I really wonder if these students know how lucky they are,” Milone said. “He was a great man. He always told close friends, ‘stringi l’uva [squeeze the grapes].’ He sure did, down to the last one.”
Hardly any tears where shed at Greene’s wake, which took up two rooms in Smithtown’s Branch Funeral Home. Instead those close to Greene celebrated his accomplished life as a pioneering journalist. “
He worked the story in ways people could just dream about,” said Brendan Greene, Robert’s grandson. Morris called Greene a “human computer,” who was able to plow through scores of files during an in-depth investigation.
When his JRN 108 class reached the second half of the 20th century, Greene’s life provided an example of his lecture’s content. “The Arizona Project,” as it came to be called, is now a milestone in the world of investigative reporting.
“I have had a few journalism classes and many history classes, and none of those professors presented the information as well,” said Katelyn O’Donnell, a former student. “He took heart into each lecture and loved each and every second of it.”
