IRVING L. GREEN JR.

Columbia, 91

By 2008, Irving Lee Green Jr. and his wife, Dorothy, had visited 49 of the country’s 50 states with North Dakota looming as the last piece of the puzzle. The problem was that flights from Maryland and Washington, D.C., to North Dakota were too expensive.

However, flights to Minneapolis were much more reasonable. So the couple flew there, drove about seven hours to North Dakota, and stayed in a hotel on a Native American reservation for a few days before agreeing to drive back.

“That was the very last one,” their daughter Deborah Green Glasco said. “They just said, ‘We want to visit all 50 states.’ ... They were very adventurous. They would get in the car and practically drive anywhere.”

Mr. Green, an educator who worked for school systems in Baltimore City and Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties, died June 3 at Somerford Place Columbia due to the coronavirus. He was 91.

Mr. Green was the oldest of three children born to Irving Lee Green Sr. and Queenie Iona Green in Warrenton, North Carolina. The elder Mr. Green, a cobbler and carpenter, and Mrs. Green, also raised Patty Hodges Berry and Charles T. Green.

After graduating from Virginia State University with a bachelor’s degree in education and fine arts, Mr. Green served in the Air Force from 1951 to 1955. After his discharge, he moved to Baltimore where he earned a master’s in education administration and supervision from Johns Hopkins. Mr. Green then began teaching at the middle and high school levels in the city and Baltimore and Anne Arundel counties. He taught science, art and industrial arts, and eventually became vice principal at Brooklyn Park High School.

Mr. Green also owned a woodworking business, making paddles for fraternities and sororities and other pieces for customers. One of his hobbies was painting.

“His artwork was all over the house,” Mrs. Glasco said from her home in Columbia. “I have quite a bit of it here, and some of it I had to store because the paintings were so large.”

In his senior year at Virginia State University, Mr. Green met the former Dorothy Fields, who was a sophomore. They married April 7, 1952, in Baltimore and raised two children, Deborah and Kenneth.

In 1960, Mr. Green moved the family from Baltimore to a house in Glen Burnie