Donald Edward Glover, a funeral director and mortician for more than three decades, died Friday of complications of diabetes and Addison's disease at Bon Secours Hospital. The West Baltimore resident was 71.
He was born in Baltimore and raised on Shields Place, and was a 1950 graduate of Douglass High School. He studied at the former Morgan State College and earned a degree at Eckel's College of Mortuary Science in Philadelphia in 1952. He served in the Army during the Korean War.
He worked for Armco Steel and Bethlehem Steel Corp. in Sparrows Point, and, until retiring in 1996, the state's Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, in addition to developing his funeral business.
He owned and operated three funeral homes over the years. He began with the Donald E. Glover Funeral Chapel at 1701 N. Patterson Park Ave. in the 1960s, at 712 E. North Ave. in the early 1970s and at 802 Madison Ave. from the late 1970s. He also retired from the funeral business in 1996.
"My father helped people, and he often said, `With a closed hand, nothing gets in and nothing gets out. With an open hand, there are endless possibilities,'" said his son, Donald Morton Glover of Baltimore.
Mr. Glover was a member of the National Funeral Directors and Morticians Association, and was honored several times for service. He was a former president and officer of the Funeral Directors and Morticians Association of Maryland. He was also a member of the Alpha Beta chapter of the Epsilon Nu Delta morticians fraternity.
Services will be held at 10 a.m. today at Perkins Square Baptist Church, 2500 Edmondson Ave., where he was a lifelong member, treasurer, board member and Men's Day captain.
Survivors also include two other sons, Andrei L. James and Royn T. James, and a daughter, Carolyn Bryant, all of Randallstown; a brother, Arthur M. Glover of Roxboro, N.C,; a sister, Molly Leath of Baltimore; 12 grandchildren; and 14 great-grandchildren. His wife of 21 years, the former Lillie Juanita James, died in 1985.
