From: Ron Taylor, President – Allegany County Historical Society
Shortly after I started my first personal website on History of Allegany County 22 years ago I had an offer of material to add about the Andover area from William A. “Bubba” Greene of Andover. I accepted and before many days had passed I had a huge amount of material to add to my website which developed into www.alleganyhistory.org . During the next 20+ years a day hardly went by that an email did not supply more!
Bubba was born, raised, lived many years in Andover, and worked most of his adult life for the Town of Andover. He found time during his “off” hours to research Veterans and genealogy of the Andover area and expanded later to the entire county on occasion to help us “grow our website”.
Not only did he work on many history projects in the background, but he served the community as Past Fire Chief as well as Past President of the Andover Historical Society among others. On his own, he followed many Town Historians that he had worked with and kept a regularly updated listing of the 18 cemeteries of the Town of Andover for over 3 decades.
When Bubba’s health was declining a couple of years ago he asked me to accept at Allegany County Historical Society Museum the several historical collections he had created into the archives of our museum. We have available most of his work which is shared between ACHS and the Andover Historical Society on our first floor of the museum in Andover at 11 East Greenwood Street. We assist the public by helping to research using the many binders and files created by him.
Bubba raised funds to create an Andover News archived computer program on cd over 20 years ago. A copy of that program set of 19 cd’s is at the museum and may become the basis to use to upgrade the program for use at the museum.
We seldom get a chance to say Thank You often enough, but Bubba created several projects and all alone looked up the military service of untold number of veterans of the many wars that Andover has supplied warriors. He personally verified & ordered and then placed Bronze markers on the burial spots of over 100 veterans. At the Andover Central School is a hallway with an Andover Veteran Memorial which Bubba’s labor helped produce.
Thank You Bubba!! RIP my friend. Your work will live on at the Museum!
Another history buff and owner of the Hann Homestead Inn on Route 417, Barbara Strouse Rechenberg, was very saddened by the news of “Bubba” passing and she had this to say:
“He wrote many articles on the county historical site and was a volunteer fire fighter, documented every Andover possibly county veteran and made a display as well as got the forbidden trail sign for Andover and I could go on and on! Bubba was also a veteran himself, rest in peace.”