Remembering Mike Green: 'I Didn't Realize They Loved Him That Much'

Barbara Green and her late husband, Mike, first met at youth gatherings organized by St. Luke the Evangelist Catholic Church in .

During the summer, youth got together on Wednesday nights to play volleyball. Later, they held a sock hop, which involved playing music and drinking Coke, she said.

The two married in 1964.

Decades later, some of Barbara Green's .

"I was like, 'Oh!'" said Barbara Green, describing her reaction when a neighbor told her about . She added: "I knew they all dearly loved him, but I didn't realize they loved him that much."

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Green describes her husband as a fun person who "could be a really big pain," namely because he took great pains to ensure no one got left out.

If the couple held a barbecue, she said, Mike would ask people he saw in the area to come on over. If he learned someone would be alone on a holiday, he would invite them to join the family for its celebration.

Green said she hasn't done anything about the alley-naming effort beyond telling her three children and grandchildren about the proposal. She said they were just as surprised as she was.

Scot Fague said Mike and Barbara welcomed his family as their own when they moved in next door to them.

One week, Fague and his wife stayed up until 3 a.m. daily as they worked on a dining room project. Mike was going through cancer treatments at the time and couldn't sleep. So he'd pop in at their house at 1 a.m. to see if he could do anything for them.

Helping each other out became a game.

"We would try and race out when we had snow and see who could do the other one's sidewalk," said Fague, who mowed Mike's lawn while he was sick. Mike yelled at him for it, he said, but he appreciated the help.

Fague once took a trip to California just as the corn in his backyard ripened. He intended to host a barbecue when he returned. But the squirrels got into the crop. So Mike and Barbara set up pie pans as a deterrent.

While the squirrels got the corn in the end, the thoughtfulness of the gesture mattered more to Fague.

He thinks the alley-naming is a wonderful idea. But for Fague, it doesn't go far enough.

"That's a minimal recognition step," Fague said. "They should name Yale after him."