The Many Lives of Councilman “Mo” Greene
Harry “Mo” Greene M.D, Town of Oro Valley Council Member
City Councilmember Harry “Mo” Greene says, “I’ve lived an interesting life.”
This is a grand understatement from a polymath who has variously served as an acclaimed doctor, soldier, publisher, community activist, legislator and artist.
In this article, we take some time to sit down with Mo and learn more about his extraordinary life and career. (You can also read specifically about Mo’s political vision for OV here.)
Golf and Real Estate
Mo traces his commitment to public service in OV back to a single issue: the importance of golf courses as they relate to real estate values.
“I went to a rally for the current mayor when he was running for the first time,” Mo says. “When one of my neighbors asked him how he felt about golf, he said ‘golf is a dying sport.’ The Mayor wanted to establish a linear park [a type of park that is significantly longer than it is wide], which would have provided no income and would have been a drain on the Town’s revenues.”
“The people in our HOA got an appraiser who showed that closing the golf course would cost millions in home values.” (This is corroborated by a study by the National Recreation and Parks Association, which found that properties that view a golf course — even if they are not a part of that golf community — enjoy 15-30% higher property values.)
Harvard-Inspired
“After receiving my medical degree from the University of Missouri, I spent most of my early training years in Boston at Harvard Medical School. I carried out two years of residency, did a fellowship in Oncology [the study of cancer] and Hematology [blood], and came back as chief resident.”
Mo recalls that the best thing about being at Harvard was being surrounded by Nobel laureates and other inspiring people. “At Harvard, you were around people so extraordinary that you thought, ‘maybe I can do more than I’ve been doing.’”
He cites the example of a fellow resident who was a marathon runner: “This guy looked pretty ordinary, so I wondered how the heck could he run a whole marathon?” Mo explains that he and a colleague named Gail Brown subsequently started running every night – first one block, and then another, and then finally to the point where they were able to run the Boston Marathon.
The next year, Mo’s wife, Linda, joined him on the Boston Marathon!
Mo ultimately pursued his specialization in Oncology and Hematology at the Sidney Farber Cancer Center at Harvard. Mo is always quick to credit those who had a big influence on him, including the Head of the Hematology Department, who he describes as an “incredible, dynamic guy.”
Military Service
Mo was awarded the Combat Medical Badge for serving as Battalion Surgeon for the 82nd Airborne in the Dominican Civil War in 1965.
“I was at Fort Bragg with Artillery Divisions 320 and 321. My hobby then was learning to fly, and I was supposed to fly solo on a Saturday.
“On Friday night we got called in and all the officers were briefed: there was a war in the Dominican Republic, and there were lots of Cuban military there. Johnson was worried the country could go the same direction as Cuba. They told us to be prepared to fly down there, do a jump, and secure the airport.
“So instead of carrying out the solo flight I had planned for Saturday, I loaded up with a bunch of medics and we came by air to secure the airport. We set up an army hospital there.”
In the Trenches
“It was just like a war zone for the first four days. I got to a do a lot of surgery, and I got to help out a lot of the Dominicans – who I loved. They were so special and hard-working. After things quieted down, the Dominicans would invite me to their homes for dinner.”
At this time, Mo was a Battalion Surgeon, but not yet a doctor. “It was during the Vietnam era, and there were not enough doctors. They took a bunch of us medical corps service officers to San Antonio, where they had something like a miniature medical school. We learned to do all sorts of stuff.
“I would end up working at aid stations everywhere that I was assigned. I worked with two super doctors – a pediatrician and a surgeon. They liked the way I worked, and they both said ‘you should think about becoming a doctor.’
“When I was discharged, they both wrote letters of recommendation to the University of Missouri Medical School.”
The Professor
Mo was also an associate professor at both the University of Massachusetts and U of A Tucson, where he served as Vice Chairman of Medicine and Head of Primary Care.
“When I announced I would be leaving Arizona to return to Boston, the administration offered me tenure to stay in Tucson. But the chance to help with the New England Journal of Medicine was just too much of an attraction for me. So, I said, ‘no thanks!’ It’s as close as I ever got to becoming a tenured professor.”
The Publisher
Though Mo is always very modest in telling his story, one of his most noteworthy accomplishments is that he served as the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine — the most widely read, cited and influential chronicle of medical science in the world.
“When the publisher was fired, I became both the publisher as well as head of the medical society. We were in a little brick building, and it became very obvious that we had run out of space. So, I got a chance to develop a totally new building – the Waltham Woods Corporate Center, located on a beautiful piece of land that was donated by the man who invented the Polaroid camera. It was a lot of fun working with the architects.”
Some of the products published by the New England Journal Publishing Group under Mo’s leadership include:
- Journal Watch in various subspecialties
- Health Watch (a newsletter for the general public)
- Morbidity and Mortality Monthly for the CDC
- A “throw away” free journal for physicians called Hippocrates that was funded by pharmaceutical advertising. (“We later discontinued it and closed it down when the pharma industry had a downturn and cut back on print advertising.”)
The Legislator
Mo also played a crucial role in writing award-winning legislation in Massachusetts for the Children’s Health Care Bill. This pioneering set of legal protections for the medical care of children would subsequently become the model for other states.
Mo is always quick to credit others than himself, and he says the Children’s Health act was helped “immensely” by Charlie Baker (who went on to become Governor of Massachusetts the president of the NCAA.)
“Because I was the head of a medical society, I had to register as a lobbyist. I was down at the Massachusetts legislature a couple of days per week.
“John McDonough was a Jesuit priest that was a representative for some of the poorest areas of Boston. They made him Chairman of Health Care. He called a bunch of important stakeholders into his office, including the head of the union, the medical society, and the hospital association. He went to the board to ask what it would take to get health insurance for all the children of Massachusetts.”
The response came: ‘we are not a charity – we have to pay our employees.’
“I pointed out that we were doing a lot of free care at clinics around town,” Mo says. “The issue became, ‘how are we going to pay for it?’ I had seen the dangers of smoking while working at Stanford. I suggested that we could increase the taxes on cigarettes to help with children’s health care.
“We subsequently passed the children’s health care law that became the model for the country.”
The Community Servant
“During my fellowship, there was a house at the end of my street that they were trying to sell. It was a Howard Johnson-kind of place which offered some food and a place to stay. It was called the Children’s Inn. It was not very friendly, and my colleague Steve Salan – a Pediatric Oncologist at Boston Children’s Hospital – thought we could do more.
“After launching the first Ronald McDonald House, I came to realize that the number of children with cancer was nothing compared to the number of adults.”
Many adult cancer patients find themselves a long way from home as they pursue cancer treatment. The Hope Lodge was devised as a way for cancer patients to have a free place to stay while they are undergoing treatment far from home. The goal is to give these patients a comfortable “home away from home” where they can (for example) cook their favorite comfort foods while undergoing chemo.
But it took awhile for the funding to materialize.
“If there was ever a gracious group that could tell you ‘no’, that was the banker’s group. We went six months without money.
“Then, a wealthy businessman named Jacob Hyatt opened his desk drawer and pulled out a big book. He wrote an incredibly generous check and gave it to me. He said, ‘I think this is worthwhile, and I want to support it.’”
Mo and his colleagues remodeled a beautiful home and opened the first Hope Lodge for cancer patients. Today, there are over 30 Hope Lodges around the U.S.
The American Cancer Society created a “founder’s award” in Mo’s name to be awarded yearly to those who have done something special for Hope Lodge.
The Artist
“When I got ready to go to college, I was talking with my mother, who was actually an amateur artist. I had won some awards, but she said ‘art is a hard career, a hard way to earn a living.’ She suggested that I do something else and do art in my free time as a hobby. All the years that I practiced medicine I was involved in illustrations for books.
“When I retired, I threw myself into art like I had never done before. I received several awards as an art teacher. I taught art courses at Saddleback and ended up becoming the head of the So. Arizona Arts Guild.”
Mo enjoys painting oil portraits and teaches anatomy for artists. He has helped implement art programs such as Arts in the Park, Ventana Gallery installations, and exhibits at The Overlook.
The Author
In 1993 — long before the Internet made “algorithm” a household term — Mo authored a book called Decision Making in Medicine: An Algorithmic Approach. At the time it was published, medical decision-making still involved a great deal of guesswork.
Mo theorized that the way doctors made decisions could be developed into something more scientific that would be better for patients. Some of his fellow faculty members at the U of A agreed, and they helped develop decision-making algorithms for specialties like endicronology.
Bill and Melinda Gates liked Decision Making in Medicine: An Algorithmic Approach so much that they bought the copyright. The manual has subsequently been translated into many languages, and is provided to Russian primary care clinics for free.
Full Circle
Many years ago, Mo’s wife Linda designed a home in OV that they both loved. It was one of the few houses in Southern Arizona with a basement that could be used to blow cool air throughout the house. When Mo was offered a position at the New England Journal of Medicine, they had to leave their beloved custom house and move back East.
When they retired, Mo and Linda came right back to OV. And where do they live now? Right across the street from the house that Linda originally designed so many years ago.
