By Harry Minium
Andre Hans Glaubke was as loyal an Old Dominion football fan as there was on planet earth.
He bought season tickets in 2009, ODU’s first year, and was such an old-school fan that he stayed in his seat until the horn sounded ending every home game, even those played in a cold, driving rain.
“I figured if the players stuck it out until the end of every game, that’s the least I could do,” Glaubke said to me last year.
He would then head to his car to listen to head coach Bobby Wilder’s post-game show.
“If the show was still on when we got home, he’d sit in the driveway and listen until it was over,” said his wife, Laura.
When he came down with melanoma, a particularly aggressive form of cancer, he braved the elements, and his own ailments, and attended every ODU home game in 2016 and 2017.
He was too sick this past season to see ODU’s final six games at Foreman Field, including ODU’s 49-35 victory over Virginia Tech.
“I wanted to be there so badly,” he said.
Andre won’t be there Saturday, either, when ODU hosts Norfolk State in the first game played at the reconstructed Kornblau Field at S.B. Ballard Stadium. He died in the early morning the day after Christmas.
Just before Andre passed, he was given a football signed by Bobby Wilder. He clutched it with a smile.
My wife, Ellen, and I visited him on Christmas Eve and gave him a DVD of the victory over Tech and a brick from Foreman Field, which had recently been demolished. I was too late getting it to him -- he died about 30 hours later.
Laura said she gave up her season tickets because, for now at least, it would be too painful to see ODU play.
“I just can’t bear it,” she said.
I showed her a video of the new stadium and she was overwhelmed by how huge and nice it is. "Andre would have loved it," she said.
Andre will be there in spirit, as will Laura’s brother, Billy Couch, who died unexpectedly a month after Andre from a heart attack.
The family purchased a brick, among hundreds installed at the steps of the stadium, that reads “In Memory of Our Angels, Billy Couch and Andre Glaubke.”
A memorial in the Glaubke family home to Andre Glaubke.
The Glaubke family is typical of many ODU football fans. They’re blue collar people who grew up in Norfolk and always rooted for the home team, be it the Tides, Admirals or ODU.
“ODU football is the biggest thing going here,” Andre told me.
The family has connections to ODU. Andre’s daughter, Aundrea, is an ODU graduate who recently earned an MBA from Regent University. His son, Adam, is a junior communications major at ODU, and Laura's niece, Kelsey also graduated from ODU.
I met Andre nearly two decades ago when he was a firefighter for the city of Norfolk and I covered City Hall for The Virginian-Pilot. I found him to be a good guy who earnestly cared for his brother firefighters and abhorred favoritism.
We would learn, as we compared notes, that he grew up just down the street from me and that one of his six brothers, Hank, played Little League Baseball for my father.
His funeral was held New Year’s Eve day, followed by a memorial/luncheon at the Azalea Inn, a popular sports bar just steps away from where Glaubke grew up.
Laura and Andre bought a home less than a mile away.
“He loved Norfolk,” Laura said. “And he loved being a firefighter.”
Rob Williamson, Aundrea Glaubke-Williamson and Laura and Andre Glaubke at an ODU football game.
Former firefighters said at his memorial service that Andre always had their back, and that included bucking management from time to time.
Andre’s kids went to St. Pius Catholic School, and Andre was devout in his faith. He attended Norfolk’s Holy Trinity Catholic and rose at 7 a.m. each Saturday for a weekly meeting in which Catholic men learned how to be better fathers, husbands and servants.
As he neared the end, he worried far more about his family, especially his wife and children, than he did himself.
“I’ve been through a lot, but my faith is stronger than ever,” he said. “I know where I’m going.”
Andre exercised as much as anyone I know. He ran, lifted weights and at times would do hundreds of pushups and crunches after arriving home after work.
“He should have been a Navy SEAL,” Adam said.
Which makes it unfathomable that such a strong man who never smoked and took care of himself died at age 58.
Melanoma is a cancer that usually starts on your skin. He wasn’t a sun lover and there were no indications outwardly that anything was wrong.
Nonetheless, in 2016, doctors found a melanoma tumor the size of a grapefruit in his groin. Doctors removed it and after further treatments, Laura and Andre thought he was cancer free.
But the cancer came back. There was more surgery and treatment at Johns Hopkins University. Eventually, the cancer popped up all over his body. Just before Thanksgiving, he and Laura decided any more surgery was fruitless.
He began taking a new medicine, which cost $12,000 per month, and it did nothing to slow his cancer.
A few weeks before he died, Laura showed him a photograph from The Ugly Sweater Run held in the Chelsea section of Ghent. He saw more than a dozen people wearing Christmas hats that said “Andre’s Warriors.”
“He got a huge kick out of that,” Laura said.
She decided to carry on that tradition – a team of Andre’s Warriors will run in the race on Dec. 7.
I plan to run in the race and hope other ODU fans will as well.
Registration for Ugly Sweater Race
The race was begun by Ann Hupp, a Norfolk resident and an old friend, in honor of her friend Mary “Diddie” Ossi, who died of melanoma.
Ann did quite a YouTube tribute to her friend.
Laura reached out to Ann in part because she’s convinced that Andre’s melanoma came from his 30 years as a firefighter. Many first responders in New York also came down with melanoma after 9/11.
When she asked doctors at Johns Hopkins about the cause of Andre’s disease, they agreed it likely came from the years of inhaling smoke, but that there’s yet no proof linking that to melanoma.
“Four months after Andre died, another Norfolk firefighter died from melanoma,” she said. “I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
“It’s not anyone’s fault. No one knew.”
But she’s trying to prevent future deaths. She and Hupp reached out to the Eastern Virginia Medical School to see if Norfolk firefighters can be screened for the cancer.
EVMS has since reached out to the city of Norfolk. Laura hopes the screenings will extend to every jurisdiction in the region.
If there is one consolation for Laura, Aundrea and Adam, it’s that he died surrounded by family and friends, most of whose kids attended St. Pius school.
He was lying in his recliner when he fell asleep late Christmas Day. He'd had a particularly rough day and Laura knew the end was near. She asked friends to be there, including Heather Vanderploeg, who left a Christmas party and was dressed as an elf.
Andre briefly opened his eyes and appeared to see Heather, my sister in law, and smile.
His dog, Barley, who loved Andre, was by his side.
As his breathing finally stopped, Barley stood and looked not at Andre, but over him.
“It was the weirdest thing,” Laura said. “I asked someone to open the patio door. I wanted his soul to be able to pass.
“If death can be beautiful, then his death was beautiful.”
As was his life.
Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu