LifeStory
Gene Glickman
In Loving Memory
My beloved husband Gene Glickman died in the early morning hours of December 5, 2020. Among the family members mourning Gene’s passing are his four daughters—Ann Glickman, Miriam Maher, Adina Glickman and Halimeda Glickman-Hoch--his sister and brother Joan Corn and Dan Glickman, and his six grandchildren—Sophie and Tim Greller, Dylan and Grace Maher, and Nick and Max Fletcher.
Gene was born and raised in Brooklyn. He attended the High School of Music & Art, founded by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1936. There he discovered a community of kindred spirits and the affirmation to pursue a life in the arts. Upon graduation in 1952, he received first prize “for excellence in theory and composition.” The award—an orchestral score of Bach’s Mass in B Minor—was presented to him by Mrs. LaGuardia.
Sometime during his Queens College years, Gene began to write for the folk song magazine Sing Out! Since it was then the height of anti-communism, Pete Seeger, a co-founder of the magazine, protected Gene by giving him the pen name Ernest Gruber.
A few months into his first teaching job—fifth grade at PS 1 in Lower Manhattan—Gene turned 21. When he was called down to register for military service, he refused to sign the loyalty oath. The pro bono lawyer who defended him—Leonard Boudin—tried to devise a case in which Gene would be too subversive for the army but not subversive enough to lose his teaching license. In the end, Gene stayed out of the army, but he lost his teaching license.
It was at that point that Gene decided to become a college teacher. He went back to school and received his doctorate in musical composition from Indiana University, where he minored in folk music.
Gene taught at Nassau Community College (NCC) from 1963 to 1999 where he helped to found the teachers’ union and served as its first president. He was a terrific teacher and served as a mentor to faculty as well as to students. He was also, at times, the bane of the administration’s existence for publishing, when he believed it was needed, a satirical parody of the college’s newsletter. Without him knowing it, the college library collected the many issues of Gene’s gadfly newsletter which they presented to him in a bound volume upon his retirement. Another copy still resides in NCC’s library.
During the academic year 1969-70, he spent a sabbatical year in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, teaching at its Music Academy. He returned to Sarajevo for visits several times thereafter including for three weeks in 1997, after Yugoslavia had split into fragments and Sarajevo had undergone a prolonged siege conducted by Bosnian Serbs.
His many musical accomplishments include more than 200 choral arrangements of songs of struggle and freedom collected from around the world.
He delighted in directing a progressive chorus called “Harmonic Insurgence” until just a couple of years ago, making choral arrangements for it and other choruses. The other choruses Gene conducted over the years and made arrangements for include The New York City Street Singers, which Pete Seeger started and in which Pete sang bass, and the University of California, Riverside (UCR) Chamber Singers, which you'll see performing in the video above. You can see Gene sitting in the audience, listening with pleasure, right side, second row.
Long Island University students researching Brooklyn activists involved in the Civil Rights, and subsequent antiracist movements, conducted an interview of Gene that will eventually be added to the Brooklyn Historical Society’s archives. The interview, in two parts, is also included in Deborah Mutnick’s comment below, so you can click on that to hear his voice and some of his stories first hand.
In 1984 with his first wife Toby Glickman, Gene developed and published a guide to walking tours of Manhattan below 14th street that visited scores of locations, parks, streets, and buildings that had played a part in progressive and radical movement history from the American Revolution through the anti-Vietnam war movement.
Here's a listing of Gene’s recent articles for CounterPunch.
Sue DeVall
Gene and Nancy couldn’t have been happier at their wedding. They thrived on being Hallie’s parents together. When I got married, Nancy read a poem at my wedding that she’d written about her own marriage as a blueprint to help guide me. I cherish still having a copy of it.
When I think about Gene, words come to mind such as a man of courage, of modesty, someone who devoured knowledge with an insatiable appetite. He was a perpetual teacher. Passing through the dining room of their home, where Gene was often implanted at his computer, he would show me glimpses of his life of arranging choral pieces. Although I knew absolutely nothing about what Gene was doing, he was always willing to share just enough for me to grasp a little insight. Years later, when Hallie was at university and starting to make her own choices about teaching, Gene supported her unconditionally, knowing that whatever decisions she made for herself would be the right ones.
I remember, when I came to New York to attend Nancy’s PhD graduation at Carnegie Hall, that there was something going on in the neighborhood when we walked down the street afterward because there were police with assault rifles at various corners. Although it wasn’t immediately clear what was going on, I could tell Gene was angry. He walked right up to one of the officers and silently stood his ground in front of him.
Years later I heard the term stone catcher. That’s what Gene was. A stone catcher. Someone who was always willing to have the courage to step in, defend the underdog and take a stand for justice.
Vicki Goldsmith
Rae Wright
Gene was so, so..whole. He was such a whole human being. He really lived 'a power of example' -- that wasn't his intention, but it was the fact of him. What a blessing to have known him! To have worked with him! To appreciate him! And to have been appreciated by him?! Too much! I bask then in the glory of Gene - I sing the Kaddish! And this poem by Carrie Fountain "Want"... Love you so much Genie Gene. Love you so, so much.
Nancy Hoch
The picture, taken by our neighbor Amy Cunningham, who served as funeral director, is of us closing his casket at the end of the ceremony.
Martha Siegel
Nancy Hoch
Nancy Hoch
Here's the link to the show:
https://www.democracynow.org/shows/2020/12/10