Spotlight on Glenda Long
Being fortunate to grow up in a rural area of Kansas City, Kansas, we had chickens, horses, goats, dogs and cats. My friends and I rode our horses in our neighborhood.
At eight years old, I heard piano music on the radio and begged my mother for a piano. With dreams of having a concert pianist in her future, she bought an old upright piano. I studied classical music on piano and clarinet for eleven years in school and into college. A concert career was my mother’s dream, not mine. A handsome young man rescued me. We married young and had two children, a boy and a girl. In 1976, we moved to Florida seeking the warm weather where we could go fishing and camping all year.
Still loving music, I was in a country band for three years. Then, for over twenty years I was in the Version Band (originally from Jamaica), a dance band. We played reggae, ska, oldies and top forty. We traveled to North Carolina, Texas, Toronto, Canada and all over Florida.
In 1992, my mother and aunt came from Kansas to live with us. One day, I saw a stained glass house that Margie Chan had made. I asked her to make one for me. Instead, she taught me how to do stained glass, and I was hooked! I spent every spare minute doing stained glass. My mom and aunt complained that all I did was work on glass; they wanted to talk!
I joined the Central Florida Stained Glass Guild and met Melody Spence. She taught us every new glass-related technique that she learned. We made stepping stones, learned fusing, and dichro jewelry techniques. She hosted a class on making beads on a hot head torch.
I bought a kit on the spot and found a new obsession. Now I have a Bethlehem Beta torch and an oxygen concentrator.
I joined the Florida Glass Dragons and the ISGB. I have attended several ISGB Gatherings which were the highlights of my journey in glass. I mailed beads to Beads of Courage for the Florida Glass Dragons for several years and still support Beads of Courage.
I have taken classes with Trey Cornette, Pam Dugger, Marcy Lamberson, Kim Fields, Corina Tettinger, Joy Munshower, Carolyn Baum and Terry Henry, to name a few. I am very grateful that they were willing to share so much information and for the inspiration they gave me. Working with glass has given me a great amount of pleasure over the years. When I retired from my job at Ringpower, a Caterpillar dealer, my coworkers asked if I would be bored. I said that I had so many projects in mind, I could never be bored!