Shirley Greene, the founding director of the Great Neck Child Development Center now known as the Parkville School, died on Aug. 13. She was 92.
“She was a very generous person who cared about other human beings,” said Marilyn Hoffman, who worked as a teacher at the Great Neck Child Development Center. “There was a very organic manner about her.”
Greene founded the Great Neck Child Development Center in 1965, Hoffman said, to offer early childhood education to families in Great Neck and Manhasset who were unable to afford pre-school classes offered by the public school system.
“It served a very needy population in an affluent community,” Hoffman said of the program. “The Great Neck school district was fortunate to have Shirley Green as the administrator of this unique program.”
Greene lead the program at its former location at the E.M. Baker Elementary School annex and at the Parkville School, located at 10 Campbell Street in New Hyde Park, until her retirement in 1988. With the move, the school began serving residents of the Great Neck School District, which includes Great Neck and parts of New Hyde Park.
Hoffman said Greene was an “imposing figure because she was well respected as an educator.”
“But once you got to know her, you could talk to her about anything,” Hoffman added.
Barbara Masry, a former Great Neck public school teacher, said Greene had “very high standards and expected her teachers to live up to those standards.”
Masry said Greene would sit down with inexperienced teachers to make sure they lived up to her standards.
“She educated them so beautifully and they made a turnaround into wonderful teachers,” Masry said.
The school moved to its current location in New Hyde Park in the 1981-82 school year and became the Great Neck Pre-Kindgarten Child Development Center at Parkville School, which serves pre-kindergarten and kindergarten aged children.
Masry said Greene helped to ensure the transition to Parkville was a smooth one.
“Shirley worked with architects and researched the best materials for the new place,” Masry said. “We just continued to do what we always did.”
Greene retired in 1989 and later moved to Connecticut, where she died.
Masry and Hoffman both said they maintained contact with her over the years and until her death.
“Marilyn and I would take a visit out to Connecticut to see her,” Masry said. “She would love to hear all the chit-chat of what was going on in Great Neck.”
