An extraordinary act of generosity

above left: Jane Woodruff, a lifelong advocate of primary school education with two of her four children.  
above right: Quaneta Greenough, an adored primary school teacher at Miss Coventry's School in Dhaka in the 1960's.

Dear Gordon Community,

I am delighted to announce a new major gift to the Gordon School that will establish an endowed fund serving students, and the school's mission, for perpetuity.

This spring, William B. "Buck" Greenough, III, MD, Gordon Class of 1942, made an extraordinarily generous gift of $100,000 to establish the Jane Woodruff and Quaneta Greenough Inclusive Education Fund. 

The Jane Woodruff and Quaneta Greenough Inclusive Education Fund will advance Gordon’s commitment to inclusivity, in recognition of the importance of primary education in creating healthy, active citizens. This fund will directly support Gordon’s commitment to creating and sustaining a diverse community of faculty, staff, students and families.

Buck Greenough graduated from Gordon in 1942 and has gone on to be a leader in the international medical field. Throughout his life and career, Buck has seen and learned about the deep importance of primary education and how it is the single most impactful intervention across cultures for fostering health and well-being in children, specifically for girls of color. 

Buck’s storied career includes service as a professor of medicine and international health at John Hopkins University, and as the founding president of the Child Health Foundation who chairs the endowment advisory committee for the International Centre for Diarrheal Diseases, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B). Physician scientists at the ICDDR,B and from Johns Hopkins in Kolkata discovered oral rehydration therapy, which, when adopted by the World Health Organization and UNICEF, was responsible for saving millions of lives globally and continues to each year. In 2002, these physicians received the first Gates Award for global health. Dr. Greenough, with two colleagues, won the King Faisal Award in medicine for this work in 1984, and after his return to Baltimore, he was honored by the American Geriatric Society with the Arnold P. Gold Award for Humanism in Medicine.

Buck and his sister Harriet Greenough Luck '49 both attended Gordon where their mother taught. Buck credits his education at Gordon as pivotal, saying “Gordon was the model for me and allowed me to understand the importance of what we should be doing in primary education. I remain forever indebted to teacher Edith Childs who ignited my love of learning and fascination with the life sciences.”

Buck has been personally surrounded by primary education teachers and their supporters throughout his life, including his mother, his late wife Jane Woodruff, and his current wife Quaneta Greenough, and he is proud to have the fund he has established bear the names of Ms. Woodruff and Ms. Greenough. 

We are grateful for Buck’s commitment to public health and primary education and for his recognition of Gordon’s contribution to this work.

Take care,

Noni Thomas López