Joe Greene rose out of rural poverty and segregation to become a statewide champion for education.

Now the sale of a 1930 Model A Ford pickup will be used to educate poor children through a scholarship in his name at an Augusta private school.

Retired beer distributor Doug Herman, of Evans, donated $6,700 to Heritage Academy after selling "Cornbread," a truck he'd driven in parades to promote his business.

When he found out that the Augusta State University professor and former University System of Georgia Board of Regents chairman died at 67 of colon cancer Monday, Mr. Herman asked that the money be used to honor Mr. Greene's legacy. He knew him through Augusta Rotary Club, having been a Rotarian while Mr. Greene was its president.

"Joe was one of the nicest and most honorable people I've ever met in my entire life," Mr. Herman said. "He was the kind of person who, when you sat down to eat lunch with him, he'd make you feel like you were the most important person in the world."

Heritage, located in the restored Houghton School in Olde Town, is a nondenominational Christian school focusing on disadvantaged children, grades kindergarten through fifth, with a sliding scale for tuition based on parents' income. Without assistance, tuition costs $6,000 per year.

The Model A was restored, but not in show condition, Mr. Herman said. It sold for $6,000, and he threw in $700 more so there would be $100 for every year of Mr. Greene's life.

A WAKE IS SCHEDULED for 7 p.m. Thursday at Springfield Baptist Church in Thomson, where Mr. Greene, a McDuffie County resident, was a deacon and Sunday school teacher, Augusta State University announced Tuesday. Funeral services are set for 11 a.m. Friday at the church, with burial following at the Westview Cemetery in Thomson.

A memorial service will be held at 3 p.m. Monday in ASU's Grover C. Maxwell Performing Arts Theatre. Mr. Greene is survived by his wife, Barney; his daughter, Cathy; and his son, Joseph "David" Greene Jr.

"As an Augusta State alumnus, a regent of the University System of Georgia, a business professor, and a friend, Joseph Greene was simply extraordinary -- as he was in all aspects of his life," ASU President William A. Bloodworth Jr. said in a written statement.

Growing up in poverty in the segregated South, Mr. Greene overcame hardships and overt racism to become a pioneer for racial equality.

His family didn't have electricity or indoor plumbing in rural Emanuel County, where he spent summers working in cotton fields. He recalled in interviews members of the Ku Klux Klan showing up on his grandfather's land. When Mr. Greene attended high school in Swainsboro, he cleaned the lunchroom in exchange for lunch leftovers.

He was delivered out of the country in 1959 through a job with black-owned Pilgrim Health and Life Insurance Co. in Augusta, but was drafted into the Army seven years later. He used the National Defense Education Act to start college in Texas, and later at Augusta College, he encountered an economics history professor who spewed racial slurs during lectures.

"Even with the meanness some people espouse, God does not make mistakes," Mr. Greene said in an interview earlier this year with The Augusta Chronicle . "If God made them, I can tolerate them."

MR. GREENE BECAME THE FIRST black member of the McDuffie County school board in the early 1970s. By the early 1980s, he had moved up in Pilgrim to chief marketing officer, senior vice president and a member of the board of directors. Former Gov. Joe Frank Harris got to know Mr. Greene during his 1982 campaign and appointed him to the Board of Regents. He sat on the board from 1984 to 1991 and became its second black chairman.

"When I became governor, he was involved and supportive and helped us develop the Quality Basic Education program that acts as the foundation of education that we're still operating under right now," Mr. Harris said.

Mr. Greene's background and his climb to a lofty position in higher education is almost symbolic, said former Chancellor H. Dean Propst, who served during most of Mr. Greene's Regents tenure.

"He was almost an example of what happened in the South over the period of time that he lived," Dr. Propst said.

But there was one struggle he couldn't surmount. For 25 years, Mr. Greene had been battling cancer. He was first diagnosed with precancerous polyps in 1982, requiring extensive surgery. In 1998 he underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation for lymphoma and was declared healthy, but he again had surgery for precancerous polyps in 2002.

FORMER AUGUSTA MAYOR Bob Young said he knew Mr. Greene for more than 30 years. During Mr. Young's television news career, he asked Mr. Greene to become one of the original panelists on his local political talk show in the 1990s because of the qualities his friend could bring to the forum.

"Joe just seemed like a natural," Mr. Young said, adding jokingly that he had to bribe Mr. Greene with a dinner at Calvert's every year to keep him on the show.

One of Mr. Greene's many great qualities was that he was a fair person, who didn't see color when it came to interacting with people, Mr. Young said.

Staff writers Tom Corwin and Mike Wynn contributed to this story.