Greene, A. C.

Alvin Carl Greene was born in 1923 in Abilene, Texas, the son of Alvin Carl and Marie Cole Greene. According to family tradition, when born, Greene was taken for dead and tossed onto a pile of newspapers in the make-shift delivery room. The rest is, of course, history. Committing Greene to a specific occupation is difficult at best. He has served as a Marine, a Navy corpsman, a newspaper columnist, newspaper editor, writer, bookstore owner, professor, musician, and poet.

Greene spent his childhood in Abilene. During his formative years he came under the influence of his maternal grandmother, Maude Cole, who was not only the librarian at the Carnegie Public Library in Abilene, but also a published author. Greene, in fact, called the library his "babysitter." After serving in the navy during World War II, where Greene ran a Chinese brothel for the U.S. Marines in Tsing-tao, Shantung Province, he worked as Entertainment Editor and sports writer for the Abilene Reporter-News . In 1950 he married Hardin-Simmons graduate, Betty Dozier, a writer for the Living section of the Reporter-News . Three years later Greene left the Reporter-News and bought a bookstore in Abilene. By 1960 he and his growing family moved to Dallas where he became book editor and, eventually, editor of the editorial page for the Dallas Times Herald . As editor of Dallas' "liberal" newspaper, Greene received correspondence from a diverse group of individuals, including members of the John Birch Society and even Lee Harvey Oswald.

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