Early Life & Family
Leonard M. Greene was born in New York City on June 8, 1918. Max Greene, his chemist father, and Lyn Furman Greene, his artist mother, encouraged their son to create his own toys. His parents made him a gift of their old stove, which he could take apart. Greene experienced poverty as a youth during the Depression and never forgot it.
Greene first married Beverly Kaufman, with whom he had three children; this, however, ended in divorce. Then, he adopted four children of his second wife, Phyllis Saks Greene, with whom he had another child. Phyllis Saks Greene, an heiress of the Saks Fifth Avenue department store family, died in 1965. Greene’s third marriage was to Joyce Teck Meller in 1967, which also ended up in divorce in 2005.
A son from the second marriage, Donald Greene, died September 11, 2001, abroad United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed in Pennsylvania.
Read more about this topic: Leonard Greene
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or family:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and an expression of energy associated with it.”
—Mary Ritter Beard (1876–1958)
“The value of a family is that it cushions and protects while the individual is learning ways of coping. And a supportive social system provides the same kind of cushioning for the family as a whole.”
—Michael W. Yogman, and T. Berry Brazelton (20th century)