Jane Glazer remembered as mentor
At the beginning of each school year, Jane Glazer would call her friend at the University of Rochester's Simon Business School and check whether she was on the calendar again.
Indeed she was, said Dennis Kessler, the Simon School's Ackley executive professor of entrepreneurship. He arranged the schedule of visiting entrepreneurs who talked with his students. He'd switch the list around and swap out people from time to time, but Mrs. Glazer, the owner and founder of the catalog company QCI Direct, was the only one he invited to return annually for more than a decade.
Mrs. Glazer and her husband, real estate developer Larry Glazer, died Sept. 5 in an airplane crash near Jamaica. Their memorial service is scheduled for Tuesday in Brighton.
"Jane's a natural teacher. It comes easy to her," Kessler said, noting it was impossible for him to refer to her in the past tense. "She takes the lectern with ease, moves around the classroom and is best responding to questions ... with earnest and enthusiastic optimism, without sugarcoating."
She answered students' questions each with a question of her own, he said, harkening back to her time as a math teacher before she went into business.
Kessler said Mrs. Glazer shared with his students her successes and — more notably — her failures. A favorite bit of wisdom was to keep plugging, despite the obstacles in the business. Another was a company motto along the lines of "sure, sure, no problem," that described how workers were to make customer's problems go away by fixing them.
She was an unusual business owner, Kessler said, in that she was quite successful, but didn't want to make money at the expense of others.
"She spoke about equity and fairness. She did all the things that are the embodiment of not only a progressive business person, but of someone who cared," Kessler said. Mrs. Glazer easily could have sold her business in anticipation of retirement, he said, but she didn't want to see her workers lose their jobs when an out-of-town company moved the business elsewhere. So instead, when she was ready to start thinking about stepping back, she accepted Kessler's invitation to meet with one of the young people who had sat in her Simon School lecture a few years earlier.
Six months later, she called him to let him know that she was naming that former student, Beth Meyer, president of the company. Meyer could not be reached for comment. Kessler said Mrs. Glazer recognized in the younger woman a skill set she didn't have and the company needed — tech savviness.
"So much credit goes to Jane for having the confidence and not being threatened by a young upstart who is going into her business," Kessler said.
Susan Halpern, a financial adviser with UBS Financial Services, met the Glazers when she moved to town 16 years ago. Despite being contemporaries, Halpern said she thought of Mrs. Glazer as a role model in many ways.
"She was always enthusiastic. I just found her energy very infectious," Halpern said, adding that Mrs. Glazer loved life and possessed "the joy in living, a joy with her business, a joy with her husband. Just a very positive influence."
The women were in an investment club for years and Mrs. Glazer was an active participant, Halpern said. They also socialized frequently with their husbands, both named Larry.
Halpern said she learned from Mrs. Glazer, who frequently flew to product conventions, to keep seeking new ideas. Originally not a fan of Florida, Mrs. Glazer and her husband eventually bought property there. They were on their way to their second home in Naples when some sort of plane malfunction apparently rendered them unconscious for hours.
Much has been written about the loss to downtown development and the loss to the community with the deaths of the Glazers, Halpern said. "They were incredibly generous to the city and the community, and it's all true," she said. But there are many friends who are missing the Glazers as individuals, too.
"It will be just a huge void not to have her as a friend," Halpern said. "What I will miss is her positive attitude and laughing. She laughed a lot."
DCARTER@DemocratandChronicle.com