Fay Greene, 91, of Boston and Edgartown, died on July 18, 2026, in Peabody, surrounded by her husband and children.
Born at the Martha’s Vineyard Cottage Hospital on August 2, 1934, she was the daughter of James Henry Butler Jr. and Gertrude Fay Butler. The Fay family of Lowell started spending summers on Martha’s Vineyard in 1909. They owned cottages along Beach Road on East Chop, including the New York Yacht Club’s former Martha’s Vineyard Station, which they moved by barge to one of their properties. The Butler family was from Charlestown, where Fay’s grandfather, James Henry Butler, was a figure in Charlestown and Boston politics.
Fay grew up in Norwood, with her brother, James Henry Butler III. During the Second World War, the family lived in Monroe, La., where Fay’s father was an Army navigation instructor.
She graduated from Norwood High School as valedictorian, and attended the French-speaking École Champlain in Ferrisburgh, Vt. She was a counselor at the St. Pierre School of Sport on West Chop and Lagoon Pond, and a sailing instructor at the Vineyard Sailing Camp. She raced successfully in Vineyard Haven Fifteens and Menemsha one-design keelboats.
Fay matriculated at Wellesley College in 1952, and studied European history and French. She lived at the Centre Française, and was editor of the college yearbook. Fay met her future husband, Reginald Greene, at a Harvard-Wellesley mixer. They graduated simultaneously in 1956, and were married in 1957 at Our Lady Star of the Sea Church in Oak Bluffs.
The couple lived with their growing family in New York, New Jersey, and California while Reginald served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps. In 1966, they returned to Massachusetts for his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he would serve for 55 years.
In 1968, a research fellowship took the family to Holland Park in London. They made the Atlantic crossing aboard S.S. United States, and would cross two more times by ocean liner, aboard S.S. France and Queen Elizabeth 2. Fay immersed the family in British life in London and in Midhurst, Sussex. Returning from England, they settled on Little Farm Pond in Sherborn. In summer, the children attended the St. Pierre School of Sport, and sailed their mother’s Menemsha, Sweet Sixteen.
Fay and Reginald lived in Boston’s North End from 1983, and spent five years in Glasgow, Scotland, also for Reginald’s work, where Fay made many friends and enjoyed the culture and conviviality.
Fay was an amateur of art, architecture, and design. Her characteristic position was seated at the table, reading the New Yorker or a French novel over coffee, open for discourse with anyone present. During President Clinton’s stays on Martha’s Vineyard, she hosted Hillary Clinton, a fellow Wellesley girl, at the family house on Oyster Pond. She was a voracious reader in French and English, with an extensive library, and studied Italian in her early days in the North End. She had a keen eye for postmodern art, which covered the walls in Boston and at Oyster Pond. A minority owner of the Bess Cutler Gallery in Soho, Fay was an early patron of Adam Cvijanovic and other artists in that milieu.
Fay fought a degenerative disease with poise and remarkable gentility. She was predeceased by her brother, James Henry Butler III, of Midland and Houston, Texas, founder of Tri-Star Petroleum, and pioneer of major oil and gas discoveries in Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, and Australia. Fay is survived by her husband of 69 years, Dr. Reginald Greene, founder of the MGH pulmonary radiology section and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also is survived by her five children, Reginald Greene Jr. (Susan McAndrew) of Southampton, Charles Greene (Sarka Havlatkova) of Chilmark, Andrew Greene (Alexandra Briggs) of London, Elizabeth Greene (Michael MacWilliams) of Marblehead, and Adam Greene (Jane Longson) of Chappaqua, N.Y.; 13 grandchildren, Shane, Erin, Hilary, and Hannah Greene; Dylan, James, and Eliza Greene; Hannah, Sophie, Nina, and Livia Greene; Owen and Gillian Greene; and 13 great-grandchildren.
Her memorial Mass will be held on Tuesday, Sept. 15, at 11 am in Our Lady Star of the Sea Church, on Massasoit Avenue in Oak Bluffs.
