On November 8th we published A Final Tribute to JeffGreen.
It barely touched the surface on addressing the attributes of this man, so here we are printing a more in depth article by his friend Dr. David Kennedy.
November 17, 2014
Dear Donna:
Jeff Green and Dr. David Kennedy
Augusta Maine, March 2014 Jeff Green in his trademark cowboy hat and David Kennedy
Jeffrey Lee Green — Dec 17, 1946 to November 5th, 2014, age 68
I’ve been trying to write a life summary for my friend Jeff Green for about a week now and I’ve heard from so many of his friends I’ll try to hammer something together to do justice to this great patriot and best friend. Whatever I start to write invariably becomes about me and how I will be affected and yet there are truly thousands who will be impacted even if they don’t know it yet.
He may have died on Monday or Tuesday last week. They found him lying on the bathroom floor on Wednesday Nov. 5th.
Jeff reported to his housekeeper he didn’t feel good and went to lie down Monday. He didn’t respond the next day and they assumed he was in bed. Wednesday they went in to his room and found his body and called the authorities.
The medical examiner has contacted his next of kin, his sister Sandy who lives in Oregon. The autopsy found that he had an ulcer and died of upper GI bleeding. He was taking a NSAID which may have contributed to his death as one of the side-effects is bleeding. Sandy has donated his few possessions including his 5 horses, clothes and Suburban to the Wounded Warriors.
Betty and I will host a celebration of life at our place in Sunset Cliffs 1068 Alexandria Dr. San Diego, CA 92107 on Sunday afternoon December 7. I have arranged some catering and the theme in honor Jeff’s penchant for having a good time will be an Irish wake. Bring your designated driver.
Jeff was a brilliant scholar of human behavior. I hired him as a dental practice consultant in late 1976, after being repeatedly urged by half a dozen or more of his former clients, to train me how to manage my practice. He did that and a whole lot more. He helped me understand and implement Maslow’s Eupsychian Management. As a result my practice doubled in just 90 days at the same time my hours were reduced and my dentistry got better. Not because he taught me how to fix a tooth but because he isolated me from all outside distractions and organized the staff so everything needed in each person’s care was in the room before I got there. He was very good at seeing ahead.
I called him back to San Diego from Colorado in 1996 to facilitate the statewide initiative process. We were struggling to block the implementation of the so-called mandatory fluoridation bill AB 733 by doing an initiative. When the State of California Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) wrote an unrealistic cost summary and Attorney General Dan Lungren attached a very biased description of our initiative Jeff got deeply involved in the legal aspects of fluoridation. We took the case Pro Per to Sacramento’s Judge Ford twice. We both learned from that experience that the courts can be awful places when truth is important. The Judge said that even though there was scant evidence that anything LAO or Lungren said was truthful we would not be able to contest their validity until after we qualified the ballot measure because of a thing called discretion. We learned that discretion is another word for cheating and the elected officials have proudly given themselves the discretion to ignore or fabricate whatever they like just to fit the occasion. So Jeff spent some time rethinking our approach and came up with a much more nuanced method of moving the issue forward.
He founded Citizens for Safe Drinking Water and became the volunteer National Director. Jeff contacted the union (NTEU) that represents the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency and brought that organization on board as the scientific advisors. He contacted Ken Calvert a congressman from Riverside and with his help began a congressional investigation. This pivotal investigation became the basis of Jeff’s strategy which he termed, openness, transparency and compliance will all laws. He likened the standard anti-fluoride attack as similar to the Charge of the Light Brigade, an activity doomed to fail because the opposition is ready and waiting armed with large amounts of money already stuffed in the politicians pockets.
Jeff’s improved approach first demanded someone in authority who would perform his/her own due diligence. He insisted that the person who he called a champion begin the process by phoning him personally. He would not use a third party to try and carry the message because too often they would try to streamline the approach and skip steps or fall back into the anti-fluoride rhetoric that gives the bad guys as he called them a way to bring the discussion back to teeth instead of water quality. He often said we have already won with the public on safe water. Everyone wants the highest quality of water to drink. When the advocates for fluoride take over the discussion with well funded government supported public relations campaigns to discredit concerns and make wildly optimistic projections about the money that will supposedly be saved their only claim is a benefit to teeth. Jeff wants to discuss the actual substance they will be adding. In many of the cities he has worked with the due diligence approach totally reversed the decision to add silicofluoride. The website for his complete congressional investigation can be found at www.keepers-of-the-well.org.
Jeff became a valuable legal aid to all who would engage in the safe water approach. He helped communities on many occasions write ethical complaints against doctors and government officials who made blatantly false statements to the public. This approach effectively shuts off the wildly exaggerated claims of safety and effectiveness by paid advocates. He helped with deposition questions that effectively eliminated the lobbyist advocates from masquerading as “experts” in legal challenges. He used a simple “constructive notice” to make sure that officials were being accurately informed. He used the Open Records Request to uncover all kind of behind the scenes deals.
Crystal Harvey chair of Arkansas Citizens for Safe Drinking Water wrote, Green’s biggest contribution was drawing attention to the fact fluoridation chemicals are not properly tested to determine contamination for each individual shipment. Contaminants that come from industrial byproducts include arsenic, lead, mercury, barium and radionuclides.
“Jeff said we shouldn’t focus on whether fluoride is good or bad, but that the state can’t decide which laws to follow and which ones to not follow,” Harvey said. “He was trying to make authorities follow all laws, including those requiring that each shipment of fluoridation chemicals come with a certificate of analysis for the particular shipment. They are not doing that. Jeff was trying to say, ‘Here is the law. Follow all the laws. Have transparency in that product so people will know what contaminants they are being exposed to.’”
The bigger question is why did Jeff do all of this work for decades with long hours and very little pay?
My answer is because he was a moral patriot. He saw something that was wrong for his country, for the next generation, for all of us that was totally bankrupt of moral value and oozing with corruption and he just couldn’t let it go. He used his tremendous intellect to peal back the layers of deception that have concealed the fluoridation program from the beginning. He showed others how they could become effective advocates by either finding or creating a champion and then allow the champion to perform his own due diligence. When the rest of the city council or water board learned they were adding arsenic and lead to the public water supply and those facts were not disclosed as required by law they gave new attention to the process of discovery. He showed the troops how to peal an onion and in the process everyone got to see the corruption.
What other people have sent me to describe Jeff:
-OMG. We truly love him; a most honorable, kind, person of integrity. Wow!!!!!!!!
-Thank you for your courageous journey on all of our behalves!
-Integrity, Intelligence, Renaissance man!
-From gifted high school athlete to enlisted man in army signal corps.
-Horseman extraordinaire!
-Great riding instructor.
-Great catalyst for any social interaction.
-Premier business and dental consultant.
-Knew more about the practices of medicine, dentistry and chiropractic then just about anyone!
-As great an understanding of human behavior as anyone could in any discipline and great drinking buddy!
-We truly love him; a most honorable, kind, person of integrity.
-We were all distraught.
-Thank you for your courageous journey on all of our behalves!
-My deepest sympathy.
-Green tirelessly provided assistance to people trying to prevent fluoridation of drinking water.
-Jeff was one of those one in a million individuals that we rarely encounter.
-We spent time toasting our glasses to him, sharing memories.
-The intelligence, expertise, honesty/integrity did a lot for humankind/children/us all to protect us from lies and poisons.
-When I think of Jeff, I think of horses, San Diego, and fluoride education. Smart guy–very smart guy. I enjoyed the heck out of him and am sick he has passed.
“The news of Jeff is so sad,” said Darlene Schrum, Eureka Springs, who worked closely with Green on fluoride issues. “There is not another person who can ever fill his space. You felt like you knew him from the first conversation. He gave so much to everyone.”
Green lived on a ranch near San Diego, Calif., and traveled across the country meeting with groups concerned about fluoridation. He helped Arkansas activists since 2005. Green worked, usually behind the scenes, on legal and legislative strategies concerning the lack of toxicological studies regarding fluoride exposure, and failure of manufacturers to follow laws requiring individual batch testing of fluoridation chemicals regarding levels of toxic contaminants in the product.
Green also worked with the Carroll Boone Water District operators – as well as their counterparts in other states – to send out a letter to suppliers asking for disclosure of the contaminants in the fluoridation chemicals. In no case have suppliers been willing to provide that information. Some cities were able to discontinue fluoridation after this disclosure failure.
“There are lots of town all across the country where Jeff was able to quietly get the fluoride turned off because water suppliers couldn’t get the information required by law,” Harvey said. “They had the courage to turn it off because of Jeff and his information.”
Harvey and Eureka Springs activists had spoken with Green only days before his death. “He was my friend,” Harvey said. “We talked about so much more than fluoride. I am just devastated. I’m going to miss him terribly. This country has lost someone who really knew the direction it needed to go.”
