In Remberance of Glenn Floyd

I’d like to see the “In Remembrance of Glenn Floyd” travel bug make it’s way to the Wappingers Falls, New York area where perhaps a member of Glenn’s family will be notified that their son/brother may be gone but he will never be forgotten. I also believe some members of his family now live in the Atlanta Georgia area. So if the TB makes it to that area my father and son can move him on.

I first met Glenn Floyd around 1972 when his family moved into our neighborhood. Back then there were still a lot of people with prejudices against blacks. He was my first African American friend and he was very important to me. He was a leader at our High School and made many friends and touched many peoples lives in the short time he had on earth. So when he was tragically killed in a car accident shortly after our sophomore year started it was a really hard thing to face. It happened while I was visiting family in NJ for Thanksgiving. When we arrived back the first thing I heard from a neighbor kid was that Glenn was dead. I didn’t believe it, however my friend Dana confirmed it in a phone call. I remember walking about 5 miles to the Jack-in-the-box restaurant that I had my first job at in the NY late November cold. Later that evening as I sat in my room at home trying to make sense of it all (he was my first experience with death) Elton John’s song “Funeral for a Friend” came on the radio and nearly sent me running from the house again. As I sat there listening I kept hearing a noise in my room, like a pinging against the walls. I found a ladybug flitting around my room hitting into walls and my windows. This was a strange thing to see in November in NY. But right away it struck me that this was Glenn! I can’t explain it, I just felt like he was there with me trying to comfort me and let me know that he was OK. I felt a sense of calm in the room after that. Over the next few days my friends and I managed to make it through a memorial service for him, but we had never dealt with death before and we weren’t very good at it. We were young and didn’t know any better. I have come to view ladybugs as my guardian angel. Over the years in November around the time Glenn died right through Christmas no matter where I have been, whether it be in NY, Oregon or now Colorado I have seen or found a lady bug. In Oregon, my sons and I returned home from shopping to find the entire side of our house covered in ladybugs, no other house on the street had these. At a Church in Oregon on the pew in front of us there sat a ladybug. On a rock on the beach in Oregon in November there sat a ladybug. In my house I find them, at work I find them, I find them everywhere. The instances are too numerous to list here. To me it is a sign that all is well with him and that he is still watching over me. I have a collection of Ladybugs, I even have 5 tattooed on my back, one sits on a twig of “Forget me Not” flowers. I NEVER will! You live on Glenn! You made a difference!