When Andrew Grene arrived in Haiti as a United Nations political affairs officer in 2006, he was only supposed to stay for a year.
But two extensions and three years later – exceeding the UN service limit of two years – Grene was still there trying to help sort out the general state of disorder in the country when the earthquake struck that devastated the small island nation struck in 2009.
Grene, who lived in Mineola with his family during the first six years of the 14 years he worked for the UN, was 44 years old when he died in Port Au Prince during the earthquake.
“He was supposed to come home the year before the earthquake. But he stayed because he loved the Haitians and had a passionate belief in what he was doing. He was there absolutely because he wanted to be there,” said Grene’s twin brother Gregory, .
“He was a very happy resident of Long Island for many years,” Gregory Grene said.
Last Saturday, Gregory’s partner, Smitha Shashadri and two Williston Park friends of the family, Beatrice and Des McWeeney walked the 25 miles from Andrew’s former Mineola home to the UN headquarters in New York City to raise funds for a school that was been established by the Andrew Grene Foundation in Haiti in Andrew Grene’s honor.
The school had been set up on the strength of $200,000 that was raised in Grene’s native Ireland, as well as the UK and the U.S.
“I think of Andrew all the time,” Shashadri said. “For me, it’s a way I can honor who he was and what he felt so passionate about. I just don’t want all the hard work he did to be forgotten.
For Beatrice McSweeney, the walk was a tribute to a friend she knew in Ireland and who she thought of as family.
“He was as close as any family member to me. He was an amazing fellow. He had a great giving spirit, which is how he wound up in Haiti,” she said.
The walk succeeded in raising approximately $2,000 from residents in the Willistons, McSweeney said.
An emotional funeral followed Grene’s death in Belturbet, County Cavan, Ireland, where Andrew and Gregory grew up before immigrating to the U.S. as 14-year-olds with their parents.
From that outpouring of emotion on the occasion, Gregory and Tim Perutz, a close friend of both brothers, were inspired to establish a foundation in Andrew Grene’s memory to preserve his legacy.
“When we laid my brother to rest in Ireland, the funeral turned into a huge thing because of who he was and what he did. We wanted to channel all this goodness into something that could be useful,” Grene recalled.
His late brother had started his UN career as a speech writer for Boutros Boutros Ghalli, when that Egyptian diplomat was UN secretary general. But his forte was sorting out tangled political situations, as he did in the wake of armed conflicts in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and in East Timor, where Gregory Grene said his brother played a significant role in making peace in the country.
Andrew would seek to make contact with people in the respective countries who he thought could be relied on to help build a future in their territories, Gregory said.
Grene said his brother was an exceptional man in many ways. He spoke 10 languages, including Latin, ancient Greek and Gaellic. He also learned the Amari language while he was in Ethiopia.
“Wherever he went, he engaged passionately with the culture and the art of the country,” Grene said.
But no more so than in Haiti, where he said his brother developed a particular affinity for the people and their culture.
Gregory said he remains committed to helping the school in Hatti.
“It’s still not enough to keep the school afloat. The students don’t have money and you can’t charge them money that they don’t have,” said Grene, who teaches English in the Saddle River Upper Day School in Saddle River.
The Andrew Grene Foundation has also established a micro-finance operation in Haiti, lending money to aspiring local businessmen whose finances are too tenuous for banks to lend money to them.
“It will lend somebody money to buy four chickens and they will start their own chicken farm. It’s very, very small loans,” Grene said. “Without them, there’s a whole economic class that is left out of things totally.”
A variety of fundraising events have been staged by the foundation. A fundraising concert is planned at a New York City venue next month, with a probable date of Jan. 20.
Information about that concert and how to make contributions to the Andrew Grene Foundation is available online at www.andrewgrene.org/AGF3-get-involved.html.
