Berry and Gardner Funeral Home

Randolph Berry Green, 96, of Rome, Georgia, passed away peacefully on Monday, April 23, 2018, at Seven Hills Place surrounded by family and less than a mile from his boyhood home on the Berry College campus. Randolph was born on May 20, 1921 in Mount Berry, Georgia, the third son of Gardner Leland Green and Flora Humphrey Green, whom Martha Berry recruited in 1920 to move from Vermont Agricultural College to the Berry Schools where Gardner became principal and took a leading role in establishing Berry College. Randolph was nurtured by a loving family and Ms. Berry’s team of visionaries devoted to the idea of making an education available to those of lesser means in rural areas who, at that time, had little, if any, access to education beyond the primary grades. With his many campus buddies, Randolph roamed the woods, fields and mountains at Berry, chased deer and rabbits, and worked on construction crews for some of the large college buildings being built to fulfill Martha Berry’s long-term campus design. Randolph began his schooling in the Roosevelt Cabin at Berry and attended Berry all the way through college, from which he graduated with a B.S. in chemistry.Randolph was blessed with a sunny disposition. This was certainly due in part to genetics but also in large part to growing up at Berry during the 1920s and 1930s. What child would not be inspired as the Berry College Chapel, the first dorms and large classroom buildings, the Ford Buildings, Frost Chapel, and Victory Lake were built around him? Or as Martha Berry attracted visitors such as Henry Ford and Amelia Earhart to speak on campus? Or as the college grew in stature and influence to attract so many fine students and faculty? Randolph’s childhood at Berry was a life-long inspiration for him and gave him purpose and direction.Another source of inspiration for Randolph was Dr. Charles Proctor, a dentist from Tufts University in Boston who, at Martha Berry’s urging, held an annual dental clinic on the Berry campus for those lacking access to good dental care (a common circumstance in rural area... (Northwest Georgia News)