By Jessie Gorges, editor

With Kansas temperatures in the low 30s, Binnie Green starts to miss the warm weather of California.

“We could have done without the winter,” said Green, who moved to Wichita in 1991 with her husband, Friends University President Biff Green.

But she liked the idea of living in a city.

“I had never lived in a city before. Everything was so close.”

And as for the roads, “the traffic was so much lighter than L.A.,” she said. “That was just a delight.”

Green grew up in Glendora, Calif., and was the oldest of four children. She attended the University of La Verne in southern California. That’s where she met Biff, but she knew about him before they actually met.

“He was the big man on campus,” she said.

The couple married, and Biff became the vice president of university relations at La Verne. When the presidency opened at Friends, Biff applied and received an interview.

“This was Biff’s first interview,” she said. “The first time you interview for a presidency you usually don’t get the job.”
But Biff did get the job, and when Binnie stepped foot on campus, she felt close to home.

“La Verne was small, and people knew each other,” she said. “It felt immediately familiar.”

Eighteen years later, Green finds that entertaining is a president’s wife’s duty. Whether it’s student groups or major donors, she is constantly making the Friends community welcome in her home. But she doesn’t just mingle with the Friends community inside her home; she can be seen at many Friends functions.

“We try to go to as many sporting events as we can and the fine arts programs,” Green said. “We probably go out five nights a week.”

Not only can Friends thank Green for her home hospitality and Falcon support, but she has helped develop the campus landscaping.

“The whole campus needed irrigation if we wanted things to grow,” she said.

She helped start a landscaping committee in 1992. Since then the campus has added an irrigation system, trees, flowers and greener grass.

When she finds time away from her Friends duties, she likes to spend time with her family, especially her grandson Braeden. She has two daughters, Jenny and Heather, and two sons-in-law, Rob and Tim.

As for the Greens’ names, they both go by their childhood nicknames. Binnie’s real name is Bernice, and Biff’s real name is Phillip. Biff contemplated going by his birth name when he came to Friends.

“But when he looked in the mirror, he saw Biff,” she said. “I have never once called him Phillip.”