Rose Marie Glenn

Rose Marie Glenn was the first and only daughter born to the proud parents of Jane Hope Glenn (Hill) and Roy Edwin Glenn, Jr, in Los Angeles, California on January 19, 1962. She attended Cimmaron Avenue Elementary, Dodson Junior High, and San Pedro High School, graduating in 1979.  From early on in her life, there were four things about Rose that she made abundantly clear: she loved music, she loved to read, she loved to draw and paint, and she didn’t want to wear no dresses!  

For her entire life, music played a major role in everything she did.  As a young girl, Rose first learned to play piano from her grandfather, Roy Edwin Glenn, Sr.  She went on to enhance those skills in music classes, adding drums and the saxophone to her repertoire as an Art and Music major in High School.  When her grandfather passed away in 1972, his antique upright piano was gifted to Rose who continued to jam on it throughout her young life.  If she wasn’t playing music herself, she was listening to it and singing along.  She crooned to 1950s doo-wop, harmonized to 1960s Motown, danced her butt off to 1970s funk and soul, and it didn’t stop there.  As she grew older, she followed her father’s footsteps and got into jazz.  Smokey Robinson was her favorite singer/songwriter, but nearly tied with Smokey were a dozen others: Aretha, Chaka Khan, Teena Marie, Stevie… this could turn into a book if we listed all of them.  She could name who wrote the songs, who sang lead and background, and who played which instruments.  Her music collection was unrivaled and includes thousands of albums, CDs, and tapes.  

From her mom, Jane, Rose gained her love of reading.  She was an avid reader and owned a library of hundreds of books – a cause of much back pain to anyone who ever helped her move!  She read everything – fiction, biographies, mysteries, Black History, even Native American History.  Her love of books made working in Super Crown Bookstores one of the many career paths she loved the most.    

As an artist, Rose excelled in drawing and painting using pencil, charcoal, and oil or acrylic paints.  Rose’s artist’s spirit came out in nearly everything she did.  If she wasn’t designing her own original artwork, she was recoloring the world around her.  At Christmas time she’d take the white pictures of Santa and paint him Black.  Her keen artist’s eye also helped her develop a knack for photography, posing her baby brother, Jason, and God-brother, Bennie as subjects.  

As a teenager, inspired by her Grandmother, Pauline, Rose developed her talent for cooking.  When she was in the kitchen, she was a chef.  Good God, could she burn!  She didn’t just rely on old recipes, either.  She had a gift for taking random ingredients lying around and making something delicious out of them.  Anyone who ever had her smothered pork chops, her neck bones, her braised orange duck, her lamb chops, her home fries, or her mac and cheese – you were truly blessed.  

What Rose loved most was her family.  She loved her many aunts and uncles, and was blessed to have an army of cousins with whom to get into all kinds of trouble. Weekends at Nana’s house playing with cousins was her favorite thing to do.  
After graduating high school, Rose joined the U.S. Army where she served for three honorable years as a multichannel communications equipment operator.  She lived in Germany for the major part of those three years and loved it, making life-long friends in the process, and returning with much more confidence in who she wanted to be.  During these years, Rose put her love of music and dancing talents together and started entering lip-syncing competitions with her girlfriends at clubs around L.A. Dressing up to the nines and developing performance routines to some of her favorite music, Rose was a natural on stage, and she and her friends won most of the competitions she entered.  Rose also took on a larger role caring for her cousin, Tisa, once Tisa became paralyzed.  
In 2018, Jason packed up Jane and Tisa to move them out to Kansas City with them, and in 2019 Rose followed, moving into her final home in Independence Missouri, right outside of Kansas City.  In Kansas City, Rose took up painting again, began playing guitar, and took on a bigger role helping her mom, Jane.  She was tragically separated from us on August 11, 2023, after over a year of declining health.  

She is preceded in death by her loving father, Roy Edwin Glenn, Sr., her best friend and brother, Raymond Glenn, and her close cousin, Tisa.  She is survived by her mother, Jane, her baby brother, Jason, and her loving cousins, and an army of friends who all miss her dearly. 

A Celebration of Life will be held at Terrace Park Cemetery - Lakeside Chapel on Tuesday, August 22 with visitation at 9:30am, followed by the funeral service at 10am, and burial scheduled at Leavenworth at 12:30pm. A recording of the funeral service will be available at the following link, https://event.forgetmenotceremonies.com/ceremony?c=266f39f2-abfb-43ae-bdb7-0e709f2f4486