Below is a posting from Bennet Zurofsky that originally appeared on the Sing Out! magazine listserv that I would like to share it with you. Unfortunately, it is rather disturbing news about folksinger, historian and labor troubador Joe Glazer:

Dear friends,

I thought you would be interested in this sad news about Joe Glazer’s health. It comes from Jacki Fralley, who has been working with Joe for several years to make sure that his extensive collection of labor folklore is properly preserved.

– Bennet Zurofsky

Dear all:

Please send your meditations and prayers for Joe Glazer. He is weak but resting at home after three days in hospital for transfusions and observation.

As some of you know, he has been valiantly battling cancer that is known as agressive T-cell lymphoma, which is usually a terminal illness, diagnosed just before the GLAE/COCO. Joe had been at home recovering from the last chemo treatment two weeks ago, because the lastest CT scan showed that the chemo was not helping. .So they have stopped it to spare him the fatigue, the major side effect, with the expectation that he will be feeling better in two or three weeks as the chemo leaves his system, and also with a prognosis of maybe 6 to 12 months to live, so hospice is being laid on.

But the lesion on his upper leg, which was the first symptom of the lymphoma, has been doing worse, he saw the surgeon about it last Tuesday, then woke up bleeding from it Wednesday, a hospice nurse came in early am to redress it but it bled through by 11, so he and Mildred went to Sibley Hospital ER early afternoon, where he had a transfusion of two units of blood. Then, not sure he was stable enough to go home, they had to send him to Washington Hospital Center because the Glazer’s Kaiser health does not work with Sibley, and he was there until Friday, reaching home again Friday evening.

Hospice is fully in place as of the end of the week with a daily and an overnight aide, and daily nurse visit to check and change the bandage, and other Hospice volunteers are apparently available if needed for respite care so Mildred can get a break. But the night aide had a family emergency Saturday and couldn’t come, and Emily was out of town, so it’s not perfect. Fortunately their wonderful neighbors, young with three young kids, are on call for anything they can do, and asked their housekeeper/nanny to come in overnight which she was able to do. And Mildred is now arranging to move them to Riderwood Village in the Beltsville/College Park area, where the facilities range from the independent living apartments, that she is arranging to move into, to full long-term care.

Joe is resting a lot, and whether he will gather strength as the chemo finishes leaving his system, as the chief of oncology told them they could expect, and as he rests from the efforts of this week and hospitalization, remains to be seen, and Mildred is very tired from the very long week, he’s
not taking calls at the moment, so use your judgement about calling Millie, and if you do, brief in the afternoons may be the best. And cards or notes, if you want to send and don’t have the address handy, should go to:

4701 Willard Avenue # 336
Chevy Chase, MD 20815

As some of you also know, I have for three years, since before the Glazers moved out of their house in Chevy Chase, been helping Joe get his lifetime of papers and correspondence ready to go to the Library of Congress’s American Folklife Center archive, and his recordings and other
musical materials ready to go to the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, where they will become part of their archive and of Smithsonian Folkways Records, and where the recordings will be available on CD in perpetuity. That work should be finished before they move.

So I have been working in their home office on and off since October of 2003 when we started sorting and packing up materials for their move to Friendship Heights, and am keeping up with what is happening, doing what I can to support them both and their kids who are staying close and coming and going, Emily from here in Takoma Park, and Patti from NC and Daniel from
Chicago are coming back this weekend.

Hope all is well with all of you, and gratitude for all good thoughts and prayers for Joe.

Jackie Fralley