Letters to the Editor May 2020

Glenn Miller: a Personal Note One’s sense of personal history sort of begins with one’s birth. It was only seventy-one years after I came into this world, as I sorted through my parent’s personal documents after their passing, that I was struck by the fact that my mother, Irene (Miller) Wolfe, had to have been in a deep state of shock and grief at the time of my birth – March 31, 1945. She was dealing with the disappearance and probable death of her famous, much loved brother, Alton Glenn Miller, just a little over three months before. As I sorted through her personal effects, I came across a steno pad in which she had written, perhaps with a book in mind, the circumstances of my being given the name, Glenn Miller Wolfe. She relates that after my older brother, Welby Lawrence (Laury) Wolfe was born in 1940, Glenn apparently asked to her, “Well, Irene, when are you going to name a kid after me?” My mom worshipped her brother. In deference and respect, she probably hadn’t wanted to name my brother, a nephew, after Glenn when he might well wish to give that name to future son of his own. Of course, that all changed in December of 1944 when Glenn’s plane disappeared over the English Channel. As a footnote, Glenn did have a son, born February 10, 1943, whose name was Steven Davis Miller. -Glenn Miller Wolfe Remembering Bucky Pizzarelli Having known