Glenn Arthur King

Glenn was always full of surprises in more ways than one. He was a surprise child. His brother, Ray, was 21 years older than him and his sister, Fritz was 18 years older. He was also full of surprises because he was a prankster. Because of this, he heard the words, "Glenn Arthur, go cut me a switch” from his mother more often than he cared to remember. He was especially fond of waiting until his mom was halfway over the electric fence when he would then turn it back on. On one occasion, he went up into the hayloft, took his clothes off stuffed them with hay and tied a rope around the neck of the straw Glenn he had made and then screamed and hung dummy out the hayloft door, terrifying his mom. He could out run her, but she had a strong arm and good aim, and you can’t outrun that. He was her baby and she did not let him forget it, even while she was sitting in the bleachers watching him play football, calling “Baby! Baby!There’s my Baby.” Glenn was a child of the Great Depression and grew up on a farm in Waxahachie, Texas in a house with NO running water and an outhouse or as he called it, a privy, for a bathroom. He related an embarrassing moment when he visited his Aunt Tonnie in the big city, Dallas, who had running water. While Tonnie was playing cards in the living room with the ladies, Glenn came out of the bathroom and announced that he had saved the bathwater for the next bather—the ladies laughed and laughed. At 4, he was already going to cattle auctions with his dad, stopping at the diner for black coffee and biscuits. By the time he was 8 years old, he would take his pony and his .22 rifle and go hunt squirrels in the woods which he would bring home and mom would fry them up. She taught him to cook all things southern, including candy, and boy could that boy cook. He had fond memories of swimming and fishing in the river with his friends and best buddy Harold Lee and gorging on watermelons growing in the field.

Glenn was a gifted athlete and a phenomenally fast runner. He lettered in four sports in high school and went on to play football for Montana State as a running back. Ah, Montana. When he was 18 because of hard times and a job opportunity in Montana for his dad as a cattleman, Glenn moved from his beloved Texas to Great Falls, Montana with his parents. There he worked in the stockyards as a cowhand. He described having to thaw the locks on the chutes during the winter with a blowtorch in order to be able to open them to move the cattle. He also told us of a memorable evening when they were loading a cattle car for shipment by rail. It was brutally cold, so someone got impatient and hit one of the huge longhorn steers with a Hotshot. The steer bolted right up the ramp and busted through the other side wall of the cattle car. All the other cattle followed him and then scattered into the streets of Great Falls. The cowhands had to ride around roping and retrieving the cattle in the fridge night. The stockyards café is where he met Joyce who was working as a waitress. Later, he got a job at the Anaconda Copper company as a lab technician and decided to make that his career, instead of going back to school. When his supervisor complimented his work and asked him if he planned on going back to school, Glenn said , “No sir, I plan on staying here at Anaconda Copper.” The Supervisor said, “well if that’s the case, then you’re fired.” Glenn got his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Chemical Engineering at Montana State. He shared a lot of stories about his college days. One that left a lasting impression was about his friend Joe, one of his football teammates. In his letters home, he would frequently mention Joe and how Joe taught him how to play bridge and how they were best buddies. Glenn’s parents came to Bozeman to visit and as they were touring the campus, they came across Joe. For good reason, Glenn had never mentioned in his letters that Joe is black. When Joe introduced himself to Mr. King and stuck out his hand to shake his hand, Mr. King would not shake it. His parents were both very bigoted, but Glenn was not that way and was very vocal about his feelings and disagreed vehemently with his parents on that issue.

Glenn always treated people with respect, generosity, and understanding no matter their differences or background, despite the environment he grew up in. After college, Glenn took a job with Shell in Houston where he worked for almost 40 years, a job that required his family to live in many different places and him to travel to places all over the world: Scandinavia, Indonesia, Japan, China, Russia, India, Germany, Europe, Great Britain, the Middle East and Taiwan . He’s been everywhere. And he always had great stories from his travels, like the time he went to a party in Moscow. At the time, he looked remarkably like the then current president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, so he went to a store and bought a purple marker and drew a port wine stain birth mark on his bald head, like Gorbachev’s. He was the life of that party. He told us of the polluted water and abject poverty in India and of finding a cobra in his apartment in India; driving or NOT driving in Jakarta; desperately and unsuccessfully searching for barbecue in Oslo, Norway; midnight softball in Norway without any need for lights; complaining about Germans’ lack of dedication to engineering project completion; or buying postcards in Moscow instead of taking pictures because of concern of potential accusations of spying by the KGB; refusing a profitable long-term assignment in Saudi Arabia which would have required his kids to go to boarding school in Europe. He would bring home Doberge cakes from Beulah Lender’s bakery in New Orleans, BBQ from his favorite BBQ joint in Houston, Lockwoods, a place in a very dangerous part of town, especially for a white guy wearing a suit and tie. Glenn was fearless. He was never one to back down in an argument or to not speak his mind or to fail to call somebody out if he felt they needed it. The second time we lived in Houston, we lived in the Clear Lake area by NASA. Several of the astronauts lived close by. It was the late 1960’s. Neil Armstrong lived three doors down and had a beautiful blue ’67 Corvette Stingray with a 427cc big block. Sometimes he would come screaming down the street and whip into his driveway, like he was landing a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier. Glenn would get so irate that “that dang astronaut is gonna kill some kid.” He would go down there and give him a piece of his mind. Later, we moved to Louisiana. Our ward in rural south Louisiana was fractured into two factions. There was a feud going on. It was not uncommon for half the ward raise their hands in opposition during the sustaining of a ward member to a calling. When Glenn was newly called to be the Bishop, he was approached by a ward member asking him “whose side he is on.” Without hesitation, Glenn responded, “ I am on the Lord’s side and I suggest you repent and go and do likewise.” This left an indelible impression on his children.

Glenn had a great sense of humor and taught us that as long as we could maintain our sense of humor and laugh at ourselves, we would be OK no matter what life threw at us. Here are some Glennisms: “When driving to Texas from Louisiana, always stop and throw away your trash on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River.” “Do not pee off the back of a moving truck. There is an updraft.” “Do not pee on an electric fence. While water is a poor conductor of electricity, water with electrolytes in it in the form of urine is an excellent conductor.”

At one point, Glenn got very interested in his genealogy. Joyce had had most of her genealogy already done, published even. But Glenn was the only member of his entire family going back for generations. They started traveling around the South for weekends or holidays doing genealogical research in places like Coffee County Tennessee or Terrell or College Mound, Texas. They would leave the three kids to fend for themselves over long weekends, sometimes with Michael “babysitting” Jeffrey and Lisa. Michael would do his best impression of Jack Nicholson in The Shining chasing Lisa around with a butcher knife. “Here’s Johnny!” Lisa would run to her friend, Marguerite’s house. Glenn’s interest in genealogy continued to blossom and with a lot of help from above, he came to find a lot of his ancestors. Ultimately, he was able to do the work for them in the Dallas, Washington DC, and the Orlando Temples. His temple service and work in the genealogical library became his life’s focus.

In recent years, as I started to help with my parents’ checkbook and bills, I noticed that every week, dad would get a sizable amount of cash out of the ATM. I couldn’t figure out where all this cash was going. It wasn’t going towards purchases or bills. It took me a while to figure out that he was giving it away to people he would meet who he thought needed it more. Much to our chagrin, he would still pick up hitchhikers into his 90’s.

Recently, it has become acceptable even fashionable to denigrate the effect and importance of fathers. Dads are good for nothing but making corny jokes. In fact they are a joke. I believe that this is a supercilious and false assertion, the source of which is the father of false assertions. When I think of all the things that I have learned from my dad, I know how important dads are and I know how different I would be had I not had mine. Judging by our behavior, it didn’t appear that we were always listening. But we were always watching and we learned. My friend Mac just buried his father and he told me this quote from Jim Valvano, the coach of the National Champion NC State basketball team: “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me.”

I can attest to this. I was a maladjusted and unhappy child. More than once my dad said let’s go and the two of us would go on an adventure. We travelled to New York City and spent the time roaming around getting pizza, eating in Chinatown and going to museums. He took me to my favorite magic shop, Louis Tannen’s which at the time was in Times Square—1970s Times Square. I will not describe it further from the pulpit but only to say that it was quite an eye-opener for a kid and I’m not talking about the tricks at the magic shop. Another time, we went to Toledo Bend, a massive fresh water lake on the Texas/ Louisiana border for several days of bass fishing. Another time we drove to Dallas and spent several days painting Aunt Tonnie’s house.

I’ve often wondered about the significance of the age difference between Glenn and his siblings. I believe there was purpose to this: because of his age he was spared the horror of WWII, unlike his brother who fought in Europe, or his brother in law who fought in the Pacific, or his mom’s brother, Stokes who survived the Battan Death March and years as a Japanese POW. Hundreds of thousands of Americans perished. Instead he was reserved for a different war. The war for people’s souls. Although the ultimate outcome of this war was determined when Jesus said, “It is finished” as he hung on the cross, the war is not yet over. Now it is all about causality count. Glenn was born and preserved to reduce the causality count, especially in his family.

Thanks for everything, Dad. We love and will miss you terribly

Glenn Arthur King, age 93, of Orlando, Florida, a beloved eternal husband, father, uncle and grandfather, died peacefully in his sleep on June 16, 2024. Glenn was born in Waxahachie, TX to George and Wade King.

He graduated from Blooming Grove, TX high school and later from Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. He met his wife, Joyce, at the Great Falls stock yards where they both worked. They were married for almost 70 years, and lived in multiple states and countries, but settled in Orlando in 2000.

He is survived by their three children, Michael (Katie) King of Vero Beach, FL, Jeffrey (Lisa) King of Windermere, FL, and Lisa (Darrell) Huntsman of Heber, UT, and nine grandchildren, seven great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren. He was loved and respected by all who knew him.

A visitation for Glenn will be held Saturday, June 22, 2024 from 2:30 PM to 3:00 PM at Woodlawn Memorial Park & Funeral Home, 400 Woodlawn Cemetery Road, Gotha, FL 34734, followed by a funeral service from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM.