Citation: Crabb, A.L. “There Was Never a Dull Moment Under R.P. Green,” College Heights Herald, October 3, 1941, p. 1. The College Heights Herald is a student publication and copies are available to researchers in University Archives record group 37.

It is most desirable spiritually for one at intervals to spend time in recreating his past, in rediscovering those major influences of which he is compounded. The writer was for fourteen years directly associated as student, as collegaue, [sic] and as friedn with Robert Powell Green. He remembers vividly the first time he ever saw Professor Green. It was snowing hard outside. In side, the teacher of beginning Latin was starting the class on its spirited march across the term. Spirited is right! There was never a dull moment in any class taught by R.P. Green though the courses he taught have, in other hands, often seemed to beget tedium. He could, and did, pull Julius Caius Caesar off most boring-looking pages and send him in person at the head of the imperial legions marching across continents in the plain view of popeyed students. The Caesarian terms passed and the professor changed the “fillum” and there was Aeneas laying the foundations of the Roma that in the fullness of time was to breed a Caesar. You didn’t need a thriller when R.P. Green taught Virgil.

He came, as have so many pungent personalities, from Graves county. He graduated from the Southern Normal in 1902. He taught Latin and Greek in the Normal from 1903 to 1907, and was head of the Department of Geogrpahy in the Western Kentucky State Normal from 1907 to 1920. He accepted that year an appointment as a member of the State Tax Commission. In 1921 he became State Supervisor of High Schools. In 1923 he accepted a position as a member of the editorial staff and field representative of an educational publishing concern with headquarters in Chicago. This position he held until 1926 when he became Secretary to United States Senator Frederick M. Sackett. Later he acepted [sic] the appointment of Assistant to Commissioner of Indian Affairs. He has been associated with the office of the Comptroller General since 1934.

When he came to Bowling Green, Mr. Green brought with him his wife, who just previously had been Angie Morris, also of Graves county. She has for more than a long generation been her husband’s companion, guide, philosopher, housekeeper, and source of inspiration. There have been three children: Russell, Frances, and Martha, all worthy of their heredity.
Western has had no more sparkling personality than that of R.P. Green; no more golden voice has been lifted from a Western platform; no more genuine concern for students’ welfare has ever been manifested by a Western teacher. The City of Bowling Green never had a more public spirited or cooperative citizen. As to Professor Green’s teaching, let C.M. Sammons testify. Sammons was a hale and hearty man from the deep Kentucky mountains, a fiddler of parts and committed to Homeric laughter, a B grade student, but of A grade popularity. One morning Sammons was sick. He groaned and tossed, eschewing food and health advice alike.

“I never was this sick,” groaned Simmons, “I’ve had the whooping cough three or four times, and I’ve lost count of the measles. I’ve fallen out of a tree and I’ve been shot accidentally. I’ve been kicked by a black mule and bit by a snake, but I never felt this bad before. If I don’t get any better I’m not going to my ten o’clock class, or my eleven o’clock class, and if I get much worse I’m not going to Professor Green’s class either.”

“Concerning,” The Elevator, January 1913, pp. 78-82. Biographical sketch with image.

“Former Bowling Green Man Gets Position, Robert P. Green Goes to the Rand-McNally Co. at Chicago,” Park City Daily News, February 1922.

“Former Head of Geography Dept. Dies,” College Heights Herald, October 9, 1963.

“R.P. Green,” Southern Normal School, nd. Graduation address.

“R.P. Green to Speak Here,” Bowling Green Times Journal, May 14, 1932.

“R.P. Green Will Make Address at Western Chapel,” College Heights Herald, May 12, 1932.

UA36 Series 17 R.P. Green Personal Papers

These and other sources are available in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room at the Kentucky Museum & Library.