The friends of Howard Glashoff will now gather to remember the gentlest ex-cop of them all. But where do you begin the memories? With Howard anonymously leaving gifts for the needy? With Howard pretending to be Santa Claus over the telephone? With Howard, in all his years in law enforcement, refusing ever to reach for his gun, in hopes that nobody would ever get hurt?
He died over the weekend, of heart failure, at the end of 63 years of kindness and laughter, and he leaves behind stories his friends will be telling until their own lives run out.
What kind of stories? How about the one Jimmy Cabezas was telling this week, between sobs, about the time Howard called him and asked him to meet at some apartment building over in West Baltimore.
“What for?” said Cabezas, a veteran investigator for the state prosecutor’s office who met Glashoff back when they were both young Baltimore cops.
“Just meet me,” Glashoff said.
When Cabezas got there, Howard needed him to help lug a big new television up to somebody’s third-floor apartment. When they got to the hallway, Cabezas said, “Aren’t you gonna knock on the door?”
“Nope.”
Instead, Glashoff pulled out a magic marker and told Cabezas to write an inscription on the box.
“Why don’t you write it yourself?” Jimmy asked.
“She might know my handwriting,” Howard said. “I don’t want her to know it’s from me.”
“It was a single mother,” Cabezas remembered now, “and Howard heard she didn’t have money to replace a broken TV. So he had me write, ‘I didn’t want your daughter to miss the Saturday cartoons.’ To this day, I don’t think that lady knows where the TV came from. But that was Howard. He was noble in the truest sense. He did things for people and expected nothing in return.”
“Always thinking of others,” said Mary Ann Saar, former Maryland secretary of Public Safety and Correctional Services. She was Glashoff’s boss for a while, during a lifetime that saw Howard move from high school at Calvert Hall to city cop to investigator for the state’s attorney’s office to head of security for the city’s Department of Public Works to a private security-camera business.
“Such a spirit, such a great heart, such a joy for living,” Saar said. “We just cried when we heard the news.”
Some of the tears were mixed with laughter. Mike Ryan, an investigator for the city’s Civilian Review Board who met Howard when they were both police, remembered the time Howard called him for assistance. By this time, they’d both left the department in the wake of the 1974 police strike. Ryan was a private detective by now – and packed a gun. Glashoff, working for the state’s attorney’s office, knew this. And he had to serve a homicide warrant.
“Howard picks me up,” Ryan remembered, “and says, ‘I’m looking for this guy. I’m afraid he might have a gun. You know how I feel about guns. He might have one, and I don’t like ’em.’ I wanted to reach over and smack him. He’d laugh and say, ‘I get a headache from the noise.’ He’d work patrol, and he’s not even putting ammo in his gun. He’d go out with an empty weapon.”
Cabezas remembered, “Howard would say, ‘I don’t believe in ’em. Some guy might shoot me, but I’m not gonna shoot him.’ ”
A piece of Glashoff always held onto his inner child. He’d call one of Ryan’s kids each Christmas and pretend to be Santa Claus. Then he’d tell Ryan, ‘OK, here’s what you gotta buy the kid.’ ”
For years, Howard was part of a big gang that invaded Memorial Stadium for the Orioles’ Opening Day games. They were cops, prosecutors, investigators and other law enforcement and political types cutting loose for a day.
They’d all play kazoos. You couldn’t tell if they were playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” or “Ave Maria.” It didn’t matter. What mattered were the laughs. Oh, and the food. Never mind traditional hot dogs and peanuts – there was Glashoff, all dressed up, passing out chicken teriyaki, cold pasta, chicken salad on croissants, hot peppers and olives, Irish coffee with whipped cream and maraschino cherries and, for the traditionalists, Cracker Jacks.
But the happy exterior covered a sometimes mournful heart. “We watched that TV series, ‘Lonesome Dove,’ ” Cabezas remembered, “and the character Gus, on his deathbed, tells Woodrow, ‘Last favor. I want you to take me back to Texas.’ Because his girlfriend’s there.”
A lifelong bachelor, Howard never got over an old girlfriend who left here and moved, long ago, to Greenville, S.C. After “Lonesome Dove,” he told Cabezas, “When I go, I want you to take me to Greenville.”
Behind Howard Glashoff’s glad smile there lurked Pagliacci.
