“I want to do what Uncle Sam does when I grow up,” Adam Glenn always said when he was young.
“It was just something that fascinated him,” says Nancy Yanito, his mother. “For the special person that he is, I think it’s wonderful. Adam is a real people person, and those that know him know that it is a great place for him to be.”
Of course, no one quite knows how Glenn’s clients feel. They’re dead.
When he was 7, Glenn discovered his favorite uncle was a funeral director. He wasn’t quite sure what that meant at the time, but he knew he had to do it. Uncle Sam did it.
“He and his brother stayed with me when I did an internship at that funeral home,” Sam Glenn says. “I took them for a tour, and we had a couple of bodies downstairs, but he didn’t seem too upset. As time went on, he made comments about wanting to do this.”
Fourteen years later, Glenn is learning firsthand what his dream job is all about at the Redmon Funeral Home in Stow.
Glenn has worked there for more than two years, while attending Kent State to complete the 60 credit hours of liberal education requirements needed to get into the Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science. He will spend a total of 21/2 years at Kent State and then 15 months in Cincinnati.
“Basically, I do anything from washing the cars to mowing the lawn,” he says. “I drive the hearse for funerals, work the parking lot and am on call Mondays and Wednesdays, then every other weekend.”
When the phone rings in the middle of the night, Glenn must shake himself out of a deep sleep and put on a nice button-down shirt, pants and dress shoes. Then, with the funeral home’s van, he goes to the hospital, home or morgue to get the body. It’s always the same routine: go in with the cot, pick up the body, do the paperwork, return to the funeral home. Some nights he is able to sleep soundly. Others he may get two or three calls.
“You think, ‘Man, I know what that is.’ But you just do it. There’s good and bad stuff to the job. It’s not really that bad. I don’t mind it.”
Glenn says he’s always been comfortable with the idea of death. In fact, he doesn’t even remember the first time he had to deal with a body.
“That was over two years ago,” he says. “If I had done it only two or three times, I’d remember, but I’ve done this hundreds of times.”
The only time the job gets to Glenn is when he’s faced with the deaths of young people or parents who leave children behind.
“I just don’t look at anybody, try not to make eye contact,” he says about the pickups.
During calling hours, however, Glenn offers guidance and support for the families.
Though he sees death daily, Glenn is not afraid.
“Am I scared of dying? No, not at all. I never have been. It’s a lot of people’s biggest fear but not mine,” he says.
While working at Redmon, Glenn has also been able to observe and learn things he otherwise would not have experienced until mortuary school, like
embalmings.
“I got sick to my stomach,” Glenn says of the first time he saw an embalming. “I had to go outside to catch my breath. After I got a breath of fresh air, I was fine.
“Part of the process made me sick. I figure it’s just normal, of course, when you see something like that, especially when you start thinking about your lunch or something,” he says.
What Glenn encounters on a daily basis may seem odd, and the fact that he wants to do this for a living may seem even more bizarre.
Off the job, however, he looks like any other Kent State student — relaxed in jeans and a T-shirt. He even has a tattoo. Still, not everyone knows how to take him.
Class introductions often come with strange looks.
“I’ll say, ‘Yes, I work for a funeral home and want to be a funeral director.’
“Then my classmate will say, ‘This is Adam. He’s a weirdo.’
“But, I’m not embarrassed by it or anything. I like it because every day is different.”
Some days he works maintenance; others he’s in a suit and tie on his way to a doctor’s office or the health department.
Though every workday involves things that are far from appealing to most students, Glenn says a cubical prison isn’t for him.
“Why would anyone want to do that? It would drive me crazy. I just can’t sit still for a long period of time.”
After concluding his 31/2 years at Kent State and the mortuary college, Glenn hopes to complete his apprenticeship and then receive licenses to practice as a funeral director and embalmer. He then wants to return to Stow and continue working at
Redmon.
Glenn seems to have found his calling in those early morning body calls.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?” he says.
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