Staff Writer
HOULTON – He says he has lived a very uneventful life, but as one gets to know Tim Glossinger, 63, he is more interesting then he might think. How many can say that they were given a pat on the back by Dizzy Dean or waited at the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1948 to see if a group of Indians would pass by the grandstand in the pouring rain.
Glossinger was the youngest child of Margaret and John Glossinger, with older sister Ann and brother John of Sioux City, Iowa.
He graduated from Sioux City Heelan Catholic High School in 1963 and went on to Wayne State College where he received a bachelor of arts degree in history.
Having a heart for education, Glossinger’s first job in 1969 was as a history teacher and golf coach at his high school alma mater.
“I financed my undergraduate degree working summers on construction,” he said. “I also served a very unsuccessful stint as Deputy County Auditor for Woodbury County, Iowa in the ’70s.”
Glossinger, a civil service employee in the U.S. Air Force in 1971, instructed scheduling and aircraft maintenance courses, and during that time, Glossinger’s continued studies led to a master of science in education in instructional technology from Southern Illinois University in 1975.
As a civil service employee of the U.S. Navy in 1981, he was a curriculum developer for the Training Development Unit at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois until 1990 when he transferred to the Curriculum Instructional Standards Office, Naval Submarine School in New London, Conn. before retiring in March of 1998.
After retiring from the Navy, he kept busy with numerous jobs from kitchen work to a carpenter’s assistant to working the warehouse and main store at L.L. Bean in Freeport, as well as substitute teaching.
Glossinger and his partner Teresa Murphy settled in Houlton because the cost of housing was reasonable and the town attractive.
“I like Houlton because it is an attractive, friendly town and it is big enough that we can get most of what we want,” Glossinger said. “It is relatively crime free, and ethnic and racial tensions seem nonexistent.”
Glossinger enjoys traveling, and that’s how he met Teresa.
“While I was growing up, our family always traveled,” Glossinger recalled. “In my 30s, I met Teresa and we began Volkssporting, a non-competitive walking/biking/swimming and cross-country skiing event. Participating in this sport required lots of traveling from site to site. We have since stopped Volkssporting, but still continue to travel.”
Traveling allows the pair to be exposed to different cultures, foods and scenery.
“Traveling overseas provides us with the challenge of learning enough of the language to navigate through hotels, restaurants, and grocery stores. We like eating out, but one of our great pleasures is living on the economy. In Tim-talk that means taking a canvas shopping bag, packed for the occasion, to the nearest grocery store to purchase cold meats, cheeses, fruit, bread or rolls, beer or wine and heading to the park or hotel room for a cut-rate sumptuous meal.”
Besides traveling, Glossinger also enjoys gardening and reading.
“I live for my garden,” he said. “I started keeping a gardening record book back in 1980. In it, I list by date what crops I’ve planted, their location, and any actions that I have performed such a as spraying, fertilizing, transplanting, composting or more, to improve the yield.”
And as far as reading, Glossinger reads two to four books weekly, mostly mystery/detective stories.
From his youth, Glossinger recalls sledding down 29th Street in Sioux City to his first ride on a train in the early 1950s.
“I was invited to Tim Kelly’s birthday party, who lived across the street. When we arrived, the parents bundled the kids into a station wagon and drove us to the Chicago and Northwestern railroad station and sent us off to Sheldon, Iowa about 40 miles from Sioux City,” Glossinger said. “On arrival, they picked us up in the station wagon and took us back to Sioux City. This was the most unique birthday party I’ve attended.”
