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July-August 2000 > The Alumni
The Oldest Graduate
At the age of 104, Dorothy Summers Green ’17 of Lexington, Massachusetts, is the oldest living graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges. In April, she discussed some memories of undergraduate life with her son, Winslow Green ’58, M.D. ’62.
* * *
“Are you glad that you went to Radcliffe?” (Her favorite high-school teacher, a Radcliffe alumna, talked her out of applying to Wellesley.)
“Oh yes. Harvard and Radcliffe were the most distinguished. I had a scholarship and I think I did pretty well for myself for a little country girl.”
(She concentrated in fine arts, probably the first Radcliffe student to do so, and was president of the art club.) “What did you do in the art club?”
“Well, we begged for a model, somebody to draw from. We wanted a naked model, but all we got was one of our classmates dressed in a heavy business suit. So I never learned anatomy.”
“Did you play any sports?”
“I couldn’t play field hockey because I was scared of the ball. I would stay late to play on the basketball team, and how tired I was when I got home. (She commuted from Braintree for three years to save money.) My mother would sit with me, having supper, expecting to hear of all the wonderful things that happened, but I was too tired to talk.”
“There were no boys in your classes, of course. How did you meet boys?”
“We used to go to church parties in Harvard Square. And we’d meet them at the choral society.”
“Did you know any of the boys who went off to the war?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And did they all come back?”
A pause. “I wish I could see them again.”
“What do you remember with the most pleasure from those years?”
“My classes, friendships, everything.”
“Your Radcliffe classmates were your closest friends all your life?”
“Yes. We used to get together every month in Cambridge. We’d have a little supper. There’d be about 20 of us.”
“Mother, you know that you are now the oldest living graduate of Harvard and Radcliffe.”
“No!!”
“How does that feel?”
“I always knew that I’d live to be the oldest.”
“How did you know?”
“I don’t know. Instinct.”
* * *
Today, Green’s family is represented at the College by her great-grandson, Christopher Kemball ’01, a biochemical-sciences concentrator and a resident, appropriately enough, of Pforzheimer House in the former Radcliffe Quad.