Gigi Green – Amherst, MA

20 June 1924 – 7 December 2023

 Celebrating the passing of Gigi Green, a centenarian Buddhist-Christian practical mystic, pacifist war veteran, teacher, nurse, healer, and multi-dimensional World Traveler. An Epoch of World History ends after 99 ½ years.

Depending on how and when you knew Gigi, you could think of her in all these ways and many more. In every one of these identities, you would be right.  Right until the end, Gigi knew where she was, who she was with, and what they meant to her.

Gigi was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 20th, 1924, in a conservative home, where form and propriety were the foundation of her childhood. Despite the conservative nature of her home, her mother, Georgia was a model for the social consciousness that would be the framework for Gigi’s life. When the Second World War struck England, this social consciousness was put to work. At fifteen, she sold cookies door to door for British War Relief. Her horizons expanded as she bicycled 24 miles round trip to take flying lessons at a local airstrip. At eighteen she enrolled in Saint Lawrence University because it had an airstrip where she planned to finish her pilot’s license. Long before it came into fashion, she dropped out of college and moved to California, where she worked in the war industry until she joined the Army Air Corps where she was an Airplane and Engine Mechanic (a grease monkey was the term she used). Gigi was both proud of her service and quick to correct anyone who referred to her service as being in the Army without adding the Air Corps.

After a brief wartime infatuation, she married Steve Eckardt on the sixth of August 1945. In the next seven years Gigi’s three children were born; Valerie in Salzburg, Austria; Peter in Northampton, MA; and Cameron in Washington, DC.  In 1952 the Foreign Service posted Steve to Greece where they lived for three years until their separation prior to a divorce, which was unthinkable in mid 1950’s America.

Gigi moved to California and then, with the spirit of adventure that she held onto throughout her life, she embarked upon a three-month camping trip across the United States and Canada – a fun but challenging task for a single mum with three small children.

Gigi moved into the house on Cape Cod Bay in Sagamore Beach that her parents had bought when her oldest sister was born, and spent one of her fondest years, secure with her children by the fireside in an unheated summer house overlooking Cape Cod Bay. Not for everyone, but she loved it.

Although Gigi loved living at Sagamore Beach, she moved the family back to her childhood home in Newton where she completed her bachelor’s degree after 20 years. She worked as church secretary and elementary school teacher. When Valerie and Peter had both graduated from high school, Gigi moved back to her home at Sagamore Beach.

She might have remained a teacher, had it not been for the horrors of the American bombing campaign during the Viet Nam War. Her sense of social duty led her to change course and become a nurse. She had planned to join the Sisters of Saint Margaret, an Episcopal religious community, but abandoned that to care for her mother who had been left an invalid by a stroke. During this time she married again to Jim Craig, a friend from the Amherst days. Although the marriage did not last, she supported Jim through his battle with lung cancer and his eventual death. The house in Sagamore and long walks on the Beach remained her passion. She worked nights caring for patients in hospital and hospice, until a life-threatening car accident ended that career.

At the age of 73 she started a completely new and independent life in Amherst, where Cameron lived. There, she became a devoted Buddhist, becoming an ordained disciple of Thich Nhat Hahn, whom she knew personally, and leading a Sanga for as long as she lived. She lived up to the title of world traveler, visiting all seven continents including solidarity journeys to Cuba and Nicaragua; a devotional visit to Viet Nam with Thich Nhat Hahn; stints as research assistant in New Zealand and Tahiti; an environmental trip to Antarctica on a science vessel; protests and demonstrations in several states and, of course, simply seeing the world while making friends and collecting sand. She visited her nephew Fulton in Alaska, Cameron in the British Virgin Islands, and Valerie in Southern Florida. Her most frequent trips though were to Denmark where Peter had moved in 1969. She rode on his motorcycle to the chalk cliffs at Stevns, weeded in his garden, and celebrated her ninety-second birthday on the beach at Skagen, with one foot in the North Sea and the other in the Skagerrak. Valerie also moved to Amherst and she and Gigi traveled together, exploring Western Mass as well as a trip of a lifetime to England for 3 weeks.

Gigi’s years in Sagamore and Amherst were a blossoming of political and spiritual activism. She enjoyed such divergent activities as founding Cape Cod Vegetarians with Cameron and actively participating in the International Sand Collectors Society. She worked with Veterans for Peace visiting middle schools talking about her experiences in the service. For 12 years she volunteered at a medium security prison presenting Alternatives to Violence, a program shown to reduce recidivism. After many years as a practicing Buddhist, she circled back, embracing both Buddhism and her Christian roots; standing with one foot in each tradition as she had once stood with one foot in each of the Nordic Seas.

She had several life-threatening events before; The leg wound in Nicaragua, the cat bite turned septic, the car crash that tied up traffic on the mid Cape highway 4 hours…. She had rallied and recovered so many times that it was easy to expect that she’d recover from a hip fracture. She did survive surgery and even the post-op pain meds, but it was only a respite, to give her the time she needed to move on, on her own terms.

Gigi’s last weeks were difficult, but she was surrounded by the love of her friends and family. Valerie and Cameron were with her, and Peter spoke with her from Denmark every day. All three of her grandchildren; Rune in Denmark, Cielia in Italy, and Talia in Atlanta, were in touch throughout the week.

Gigi died peacefully in the bed in which she was born, as she wished. She lives on in the countless lives she touched. She was predeceased by her four older sisters and her beloved nephew, Fulton and niece, Karen. In addition to her children, Valerie, Peter and Cameron and grandchildren, Talia, Rune and Cielia, her life is celebrated by her stepsons Jim and Ken; her daughter in law Elisabeth, her grandson in law, Andre, her nieces and nephews; Carol, Bentley, Susan, Sally and Larry; and her great grandchildren Erika, Dagmar, Fulton and Casey; as well as her large chosen family especially Alan, who called her “Ma” for over 50 years. Her friends and supporters, those in her Sangha and beyond, are too numerous to mention. Gigi treasured each one.

In lieu of flowers, we suggest a donation in Gigi’s name to:

Amherst Survival Center https://amherstsurvival.org/

Dakin Humane Society, https://www.dakinhumane.org/

Perkins Library https://www.perkins.org/library/

Society of St. Margaret https://societyofstmargaret.org/

or another group of your choosing in her spirit.

A memorial service will be held at Grace Episcopal Church, Amherst MA, January 27th at 11:00 am. Reception will follow in the Parish Hall, Spring Street, at 12:15.