Glen Hoffman

Glen Hoffman punched a clock for forty-three years. He was there at six when the alarm went off, there at dinner when it mattered, there in the background of every hard thing that ever happened to this family, never loud about it, never asking to be thanked. He just held the line. He liked his music the same way he liked most things: on his own terms. Whatever was playing, he never made excuses for it. That was Dad. No performance, no apology. I'm fifty-two years old. I have a mortgage, a marriage, children of my own. I thought I understood what it meant to carry weight. I didn't. Not really. Not until the morning I had to make calls that should have been impossible to make, and I realized there was no one left to call if I couldn't. Dad was always that call. The floor beneath the floor. Glen Hoffman lived eighty years with steady hands and quiet conviction. He didn't need a room to notice him. He needed a family to protect, and he did, until the last. He is survived by his son, who is only now learning what that costs.