New Year’s Eve is supposed to be a festive occasion, celebrated with parties, good cheer and hopes for a happy new year at the stroke of midnight. New Year’s Eve 2011 was far from an ordinary News Year’s Eve for Howard fans. While everyone was celebrating with friends and family, terrible news rocketed across the internet and bounced off of cell phone towers around 10:00 pm Central Time – Glenn Lord was gone. The party ended for me the moment I read the news on my iPhone.
Howard Heads worldwide collecitvely got a punch in the gut that evening one year ago today. The man who single-handedly saved REH from obscurity, had sudden left us. It was hard for me to accept — I had just seen him six weeks prior at his 80th birthday celebration and had just received a handwritten thank you card from him for attending that special event. In the hours and days following the news of his death, tributes and remembrances of Glenn flooded the internet. Here on the TGR blog all posts for the first week of 2012 were devoted to him.
December is certainly a bittersweet month for Howard fans — it is the month Conan was born and the month Glenn Lord passed away. Like Conan, Glenn was many things in his life: son, soldier, husband, father, provider, collector, literary agent, grandfather, who left a legacy for all of us, seeking out and keeping Howard’s writings for posterity. But most of all he was a friend to all Howard fans and throughout his life, he always took time to sign books, answer letters and questions for everyone. Easy going, soft spoken with a wry sense of humor, he was one of a kind and it was an honor for me to have known him.
When I started publishing TGR again in August of 2003, Glenn mailed me a check for the issue. I returned the check to him with the magazine and a note that said: “Glenn, your money is no good here.” From then on, Glenn’s copy was the first to go in the mail. Recently, when I began, mailing out copies of the new issue, I couldn’t mail it to him – which felt strange. However, I decided the first copy of every new issue would be mailed gratis to someone I felt epitomized what Glenn was all about – the ultimate fan and collector. So a new tradition was born out of an old one.
A few weeks ago, I drove over to Humble to visit Glenn. Some folks might wonder why he is buried in Humble instead of Pasadena, some 28 miles away. Well, Rosewood Memorial Park is where Lou Ann’s family (her maiden name is Yates) has a plot and many of her family members are buried there, including her mother. Glenn has a VFW grave marker, one of the benefits of being a veteran, which includes Lou Ann’s marker where she will be buried someday next to her beloved Glenn. One little known fact about Glenn is his full name — Oliver Glenn Lord; he did not care for his first name and he always went by his middle name.
If you are ever visiting the Houston area and want to pay your respects, Rosewood Memorial Park Cemetery is located at 2602 South Houston Avenue, Humble, Texas 77396. Below is a map (click to enlarge) and information for finding his gravesite in the cemetery.
Locating Glenn’s Gravesite in Rosewood Memorial Park
The cemetery entrance is on South Houston Avenue. You will see the main building (pictured above) on your right. Go to the third cross street and turn left as shown by the green line on the map. Drive to the third intersection, which is a small traffic circle, and turn left. On your right is Section 3. Drive slowly toward the end of the section. Almost on the corner of the section, you will see a large granite grave marker (yellow dot on map) with the name “Dohmann” on it. Stop the car and get out, facing Section 3. A short distance parallel from the “Dohmann” marker you will see Glenn’s grave (blue dot on map), which is near the curb. His marker is flush with the ground, so it may take you a moment or two to locate it.
So this last post of 2012 ends the year as it began, with Glenn. While we all miss Glenn and his wisdom, he left us an endowment of all the Howard material he had collected over a lifetime and a few surprises – some previous unknown and unpublished bits and pieces that we will be enjoying over the next several years. Glenn is gone, but he is not forgotten and never will be as long as we keep him alive in our hearts and minds and thank him for giving us the gift of Robert E. Howard.
