Dr Greening, an obstetrician/gynaecologist and the first clinical specialist to practice in the Manning Valley, died on Friday afternoon, at the age of 95.

A long-time resident of Black Head, she had been in care at GLAICA House, Tuncurry, for about 18 months due to her decline in mobility after a fall in which she fractured her hip.

Her funeral service will be held at Manning Great Lakes Memorial Gardens at 2pm tomorrow.

Among the mourners will be many Manning Valley residents who she delivered into the world, in her several decades of practising locally.

In recent years Dr Greening has been lauded for her generous philanthropic acts, donating $100,000 to establish The Dorothy Greening Scholarship Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney, $50,000 each to Taree and Wingham high schools to establish scholarships for students going on to university, and $50,000 to help maintain and keep the Black Head ocean pool open.

The Medical Alumni Association Billie Greening Scholarship was established by the University of Sydney in 2007 to honour the commitment to the wellbeing of medical students by Dr Greening, who was herself an alumnus of the university.

She was inspired by an article she read in ‘Radius’, the Faculty of Medicine and Medical Graduates Association magazine, which told of the number of medical students who need to work long hours to support themselves while studying.

This brought back memories of her own efforts to enter medicine, a profession she aspired to after an initial career choice as a nurse and one in which she gave dedicated service in several countries during World War II.

Born in Sydney in 1917, Dorothy Greening completed her Leaving Certificate at Glen Innes High School. Even though she topped her class, and had high aspirations of her future career, there were no scholarships available to “girls”.

“The only other thing girls could do was nursing,” she was to recall much later, in her memoirs.

Her entry into nursing – and later to become a doctor – was not without its incidents.

After general nursing training she studied midwifery at Crown Street Women’s Hospital, but when she wanted to enlist in the Army nursing corps in World War II, the authorities discovered she hadn’t completed her nursing training, nor was she the minimum age (25) ... and she failed the eyesight test!

Undeterred, she completed her training, falsified her birth certificate by two years (she was only 23 at the time), and learnt the eyesight test card off by heart.

She was finally accepted by the Army, and began a long stint of service overseas including Tripoli, Crete, Borneo and Singapore.

On her return to Australia and her discharge, she completed her midwifery course at Crown Street and bought a small car so as to run a home visit nursing service.

She applied and was accepted to study medicine at Sydney University and worked long hours on a meagre visiting nurse’s pay to fund her studies.

Appointed a resident medical officer at Sydney Hospital and senior RMO in 1957, she was also invited by the Army to join the Army Reserves, where she was appointed firstly a captain and then promoted to major.

In 1961 she went to England to obtain her specialist degrees in obstetrics and gynaecology, but failed on her first attempt as a result of – in her words – “having too much of a good time”.

Her second attempt was much more successful – in fact she topped the whole of the country in her final exams at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

Returning from England at the end of 1964, and to Wingham where she had done a previous stint as a medico, Dr Greening set up a lone practice as the region’s first obstetrics/gynaecology specialist.

However she was to meet with fierce opposition from some local general practitioners who wanted the Manning area to remain generalist. In fact, in her words, they attempted to drive her “out of town”.

She stubbornly continued, and ran her practice for many years, bringing hundreds, possibly thousands of babies into the world across the Manning in the 1960s and 70s.

She moved in the 1970s to Black Head where she continued to live in retirement after 1986, a quiet but very active and fit life, walking and swimming, and enjoying regular doses of overseas travel.

Every year on Anzac Day she travelled to Sydney to proudly march with her former Army buddies.

Her philanthropic acts of recent years were performed quietly and humbly, without ever any thought of recognition, but were of such magnitude that recognition did – rightly – come her way.

“I had to work for most of the time I was studying for my degree so I understand how difficult it is for young people in the medical program today,” she said at the time she made her major gift to Sydney University in 2007.

The scholarship named in her honour is a long term commitment to students and is available to students enrolled in its medical program, who are experiencing severe financial difficulty which significantly impacts on their studies. Each scholarship winner receives $5000.

Similarly, at Wingham and Taree high schools, graduating students going on to study at university receive help in their first year to ease the financial burden of their transition.

When it appeared her beloved Black Head ocean pool might close, Dr Greening bolstered the efforts of the local community and especially its ‘Dads’ Army’, with a $50,000 donation towards a total pool renovation and upgrade.

And seven years ago, at a fun day to help raise funds to keep the Black Head pool open, she was proud to have been the oldest lap swimmer – at the age of 88!

Dr Greening remained always hesitant to divulge the details of her philanthropy.

“Basically I’m in my 90s, I’ve got all this money, so what am I going to do with it?” she said after her donation to Taree High in 2008.

“I’ve done fairly well out of the medical field and there are a lot of students out there today facing hard times. But to be honest, I think everyone has made an awful lot of fuss about nothing.”

While out walking her dog one day in 2006, she suffered a fall and broke her hip, and that unfortunately was to lead to her gradual decline in mobility and her move to GLAICA House.

Dr Greening is survived by her sister Judy, of Sydney, and also nieces in Sydney.