Leonard Glenn Smith, 79, of Ballinger passed away Friday, June 22, 2018 in Fort Worth. Services will be held at 10:00 am on Friday, June 29 at Lange Funeral Home Chapel. A private burial will follow at Old Runnels Cemetery. |
| (Ballinger Ledger photo) |
Bored with retirement, and living back in Texas, GLENN started writing fiction in 2010. Amazon has many of his earlier nonfiction books that he co-authored with his former wife Joan on educational topics. After the above article was published in the Ballinger Ledger, he planned to finish his fourth novel, "Stolen Gold", with the locale of the story being Ballinger, Texas. The Ledger article contains a lot of GLENN'S personal history. Article on Glenn's Books He also wrote an autobiography in the 50th Class Reunion handbook.
I'm not certain when GLENN shared this cover of a future book he planned called "Heading Home" or if he ever started writing it. I could find no listing for it or the book "Stolen Gold". I imagine he ceased to write, as he had increasing vision problems in recent years. I wonder if the "Heading Home" title was some kind of prophetic vision he had of his future.
As some of you know, GLENN was a talented photographer. One of my favorites was the one below he took, then photo-shopped with special effects of Main and Broadway in Ballinger.
GLENN and I shared some good stories and a few trips to surrounding areas to photograph the sites during the time I lived in Ballinger and was working on the class handbook. He helped not only financially with the handbook, but also with some of the photos. He offered to speed up the final editing process before taking it to the printers by "proofreading" the final text. I chewed him out royally when I discovered to my dismay that he had missed some pretty obvious mistakes! But then, he was an English prof and an author... someone else did the proofreading, didn't they?
Here is a final picture of Glenn. He said it was his favorite.
Glenn feeding the chickens!
Goodbye, our friend. Until we meet again..
Peace,
Marilyn
