Leigh Green succumbs to cancer

It is rare to know a man just a little bit but to miss him intensely when he is gone forever.
Leigh Garnham Green had that effect on many people.
Green, who moved Creative Loafing readers last May with a cover story on his battle with cancer, died Friday, Jan. 26. A Canadian-born television reporter, he got his start at an Ottawa station, went on to become a foreign correspondent for two major networks, and began work in 1989 as a senior correspondent for WGNX (now WGCL) Channel 46 in Atlanta.
His stories stood out — as Green did in a sometimes shrill and eagerly ambitious press corps — for their wry wit and unassuming candor. At a memorial service Sunday at Druid Hills United Methodist Church, relatives and friends recalled how unimpressed he was by rank and celebrity, and how an easy-going reverence for truth was central to his character, both personally and professionally.
“He opened up, and he took the whole world in,” Pastor Rex Kaney told mourners.
So friends and acquaintances were not so much surprised as they were impressed by the gracious manner with which he approached the disease that took him. In 1998, a tumor was discovered behind his right kidney. Both the tumor and the kidney were removed. But late in 1999 — after several months of immunotherapy — Green was diagnosed with renal-cell carcinoma, “an especially nasty disease even by cancer standards,” he wrote in the May 20 Creative Loafing article. He was given four to 16 months to live.
Green’s frank and eloquent cover story captured the words of someone who openly confronted the pain and spiritual difficulty of his situation, and who — through it all — maintained his equanimity. He described how, in a conversation with his doctor, he learned that his disease was terminal.
” ‘So I’m fucked?’ I asked. He nodded.
“I find no fault with my doctor for his bluntness. I had, all along, insisted upon it. But that little nod hurled me from a cliff. The fall continues as I write you. The sheer enormity of what I had just been told still appears to me as a terrible abyss lined with sorrow and confusion and whole lot more.”
Green even saw a self-deprecating humor in the situation. Explaining why he hadn’t joined a support group, he wrote: “While I am fairly riveted with my own cancer, I am profoundly uninterested in that of others. This, of course, begs the question of why you should be interested in mine. I console myself with the hope that my insight makes my trial particularly interesting.”
At the same time, the article pulled no punches: Green faulted his own smoking habit for the disease, and he shared the pain of breaking the news to his wife, his mother and his 9-year-old son.
In September, Green hosted a two-part series on end-of-life care on a Georgia Public Television series on cancer. “Final Choices” was a well-received companion to Bill Moyers’ national PBS series “On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying.” In the documentary, Leigh interviewed families of terminally ill patients about the options they had and choices they were making about end-of-life care for their loved ones.
In early January, he began work on a follow-up piece for Creative Loafing. He had undergone a series of experimental treatments at the National Institutes of Health, outside Washington. All of them failed, and he said at the time that he and his family believed it was time for “hope and prayer.”
He said that since the CL article appeared he’d been amazed at the support he’d attracted from dozens of people — both friends and strangers. He regretted being unable to thank all of them. When told he sounded surprisingly chipper, Green laughed and said, “Well, you’re catching me on one of my good days. A few more like this and I should be able to put [the article] together.”
There were few such good days left, however. His wife, Linda, said he took a turn for the worse soon afterward. Green died Friday at Haven House Hospice.
A visitor who happened to be at his home during the telephone call about the follow-up article said his cheerful strength seemed incongruous with his physical condition: He was thin, his pallor was gray and he had a large, visible tumor. She was visiting to help him. But, she said, he ended up encouraging her about a personal difficulty of her own.
“He said, ‘Please come by again. This does me a lot of good to help somebody.’ ”
Green, who was 47, is survived by his wife, Linda Skvasik Green, and his son, Ian Martin Green, both of Atlanta; and his mother, Betty Green, and two brothers, Ian Colin Green and Martin Charles Green, all of Ottawa.
In lieu of flowers, the family asks that donations be made to a college fund established for Ian. Contributions may be directed to: The Ian M. Green Fund, P.O. Box 8754, Atlanta, GA 31106. Condolences may be sent to Linda Green, P.O. Box 8754, Atlanta, Georgia 31106.