Around 1930, Arthur “Harold” Green landed in Boston to live with his godfather and start at English High School Green is now 107 years old, the EHS Alumni Association said, the school’s oldest known alumnus.
Green’s family lived in Baltimore at the time, but he was sent to Boston for a shot at a better school and less racism, according to his daughter Myra Green. The family chose English High School for its teaching staff’s reputation and athletic opportunities in sports including baseball, football and diving.
Green graduated in the class of 1934, 90 years ago.
English High School was founded as the “English Classical School” in 1821 as the first public high school in the U.S., according to the English High School Association. The school opened at corner of Derne St. and Temple St. on Beacon Hill, and 101 male pupils passed an admission test to get in.
By the time Green enrolled, EHS had moved around the city several times and landed in the South End, the association documented. The building, shared by Boston Latin School until 1921, was made to take in over 2,000 students. The school still only took male students.
After his graduation, Green moved again and so did EHS. The school bounced to Avenue Louis Pasteur in Fenway in 1954 and finally to its current home in Jamaica Plain in 1989.
In the 1940s, Green worked as a mailman before being drafted into World War II and later the Korean War, the association said in a release. He married and spent 50 years with his late wife.
Green retired from the postal service in 1972, the release said, and started up new jobs as a property owner and freelance wedding photographer in Baltimore. Since he’s turned 100, the EHS alumnus has thrown out the first pitch at a Baltimore Orioles game, been on a segment of “Good Morning America” and taken part in the “Veterans Honor Flight” in Washington.
Green keeps going with a mix of bowling, crosswords, reading the paper and lots of fruit, his daughter said.
The English High School Association noted that those who know him would say “Arthur has exemplified EHS’s 203 year-old principles of ‘Honor, Achievement and Service’ that underlie an EHS education.”