The last time I would see Glenn Esterly, journalist, was on Friday, Nov. 14, four days after he left as editor of the Culver City News.
He hailed me at an intersection, parked his car and came over to where I was standing. It was a typical Glenn moment. Embarrassedly, face down, he thanked me, relatively lavishly, gracefully, boyishly, bashfully, for a piece I had written about him.
He should have been happy to see his daughter and son-in-law, who just had arrived from Iowa for a visit, but he was not feeling even any artificial cheer.
[See the Nov. 12 commentary, “Farewell to a Comrade”]
It is with wrenching sadness we report that on Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Esterly, who was 66 years old, was found dead in his Culver City apartment, six weeks and one day after departing the News.
That the two were inextricably related seems obvious.
“Leaving the newspaper killed Glenn,” his landlord said flatly this morning.
Mr. Esterly lived his productive life as if he expected no more than a one-sentence obituary to be written at his passing.
He often reminded me of my late brother. Both gentlemen required patience. You would have to watch either for 24, perhaps 48, consecutive hours before their normally bland expressions would crease into the thinnest smile. They were closer to a thimble than a barrel of laughs.
They made extreme privacy, and probably privation, their objective at the start of every day.
For Mr. Esterly, happiness always seemed like a distant, perhaps unattainable, dream.
‘A Disaster’
Moulton Meyers, Mr. Esterly’s landlord, said he found him lying on the floor of the room that the former editor rented from him last summer.
“When I walked in, at first I thought he was sleeping,” the landlord said. “I tried to move his shoe with a broomstick, but there was no response. I thought, ‘My God, this is a disaster,’ and then I called 9-1-1.
“I was lost. I was upset. I was sad.”
With that, the landlord took a step back to measure his friend.
“Mild-mannered, respectful, kept very much to himself,” was his succinct sum-up of his unusual tenant.
Their relationship began to take shape after Mr. Meyers contacted the Culver City News to advertise a room for rent. A lady at the newspaper said she knew someone who would be interested.
An Ideal Tenant
“Glenn seemed like the kind of person I wanted to work with,” the landlord said. “I lean toward educated people. They tend to be more reasonable, rational. It seemed as if the air around Glenn was very positive.”
Since they were living in the same home, they engaged often, at least in the beginning, far less so at the end.
That Mr. Esterly would engage anyone for a length of time in borderline repartee comes as a jolt to friends. Who knew? He was a man of a one or two words, even fewer overt emotions.
A native of the Caribbean who is a committed Christian, Mr. Meyers said that “at first, we had very good conversations. We talked a lot about the decline of morals in America society.”
During the autumn months, they grew to know each other better, spoke often and mingled regularly.
Since they were sharing space, the landlord noticed that his tenant would work very long hours, once going for 18 hours. The editor would talk about friction in the workplace, and he tried to overcome it with his gut-level love affair with the irresistible beauty of raw journalism.
No Career Choice to be Made
Some guys were born to be newspapermen. The Quiet Man from the Middle West was in the front row.
I identified with him, because newspapers are all that he and I ever did. It is the equivalent of being lucky enough to drool over a jumbo hot fudge sundae at every meal.
“Glenn loved his work,” his landlord told me. “The newspaper was his life. He loved editing. He loved to talk about the newspaper.”
Mr. Esterly had not been in robust health for a number of years. When friends remarked about a pronounced weight loss, the stoic editor would just shrug.
For landlord and tenant, their formerly collegial world went upside down after Mr. Esterly left the Culver City News last month. The Quiet Man became more mysterious. He kept more to himself than usual.
The Editor Knew
Whether he realized these were his final days is not definite.
“Probably so,” Mr. Meyers concluded. “I think Glenn knew night was closing in on him. He seemed lost. He had changed completely. The News was his life. Such a sad experience. The pain was very poignant.”
To his consternation, Mr. Meyers learned what friends had experienced for years, that Mr. Esterly’s most heartfelt value was standing guard over his extreme privacy.
The bloom vanished from his almost- chatty relationship with his landlord. Where Mr. Esterly once moved about the house freely and openly, especially at laundry time, now he went into hiding. Always monastic and spare, after Nov.10, he vanished. Gone were his regular, nearly spirited, exchanges with his landlord. Mr. Meyers would go days without seeing him.
There was no doubt in the landlord’s mind something was seriously wrong.
A Conundrum
Mr. Esterly’s final days were flavored by a conflict within himself, to stay or to go. His family wanted him back home, in the bosom of relatives, in Iowa, next door to where he grew up, in Minnesota.
A final decision has not been made on funeral arrangements.
But services are expected to be in Iowa, where his family always was certain that he would find authentic peace and love.
