Remembering the Gentle Heart of Howard Glashoff

January 3, 2020 Michael Olesker

(Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

The brand new year arrives with its sorrowful reminder: last Friday, Jan. 3, marked a full decade since Howard Glashoff died at 63 of heart failure.

Heart failure? Howard had maybe the kindest heart of anybody in history around here.

He was certainly the gentlest ex-city cop of them all. Herefused, absolutely, to reach for his gun. Whatever the situation, whatever thedanger, he’d say he didn’t want anybody getting hurt. One less gun involved,maybe everybody could work through the tension of the moment.

I still remember the phone call from another ex-city cop, Jimmy Cabezas, sobbing into the phone that Howard was gone. When he got his composure back, Jimmy remembered the time Howard called and asked him to meet at some apartment building over in West Baltimore.

“What for?” said Cabezas, who later spent years as aninvestigator for the state prosecutor’s office. They’d been friends since theywere both young Baltimore cops.

“Just meet me,” Howard said.

He needed Jimmy to help lug a big new TV set up to a third-floorapartment. When they got there, Cabezas asked, “Aren’t you gonna knock?”

“Nope. Just leave it in the hallway.”

Then, Howard pulled out a magic marker and told Jimmy 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 wanther to know it’s from me.”

“It was a single mother with no money,” Cabezas remembered,“and Howard heard she didn’t have money to replace a broken TV. So he had mewrite, ‘I didn’t want your daughter to miss the Saturday cartoons.’ To thisday, 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 nothingin return.”

Mike Ryan was another guy who’d come up with Howard in the police department. Later, they both worked as investigators for the city state’s attorney’s office. One day, Howard asked Mike to accompany him as he served a homicide warrant.

“Howard picks me up,” Ryan remembered, “and says, ‘I’m lookingfor 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,” Ryan said. “He’dlaugh and say, ‘I get a headache from the noise.’ When he was a uniformed copworking patrol, he wouldn’t even put ammo in his gun. He’d go out with an emptyweapon. He’d say, ‘Some guy might shoot me, but I’m not gonna shoot him.’”

A piece of Howard always held on to 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.’”

But Howard’s happy exterior covered a soulful heart. Cabezasremembered, “We watched that TV series, ‘Lonesome Dove,’ and the character Gus,on his deathbed, tells Woodrow, ‘Last favor, I want you to take me back toTexas.’ Because his girlfriend’s there.”

Howard Glashoff never married. He never got over an oldgirlfriend who left here and moved, long ago, to Greenville, S.C. Old friendsknew the story, and knew who she was.

After they watched “Lonesome Dove,” he told Cabezas, “When Igo, I want you to take me to Greenville.”

Behind Howard Glasshoff’s tender smile there lurked Pagliacci.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.