‘We’re all better for having met her’

She entered rooms with a song and left conversations with an “I love you.”

Those who met Mary Anne Glazner, even just once, could see she was “one of these people that they really don’t make anymore,” said Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Suzan Doidge.

“She definitely knew how to light up a room,” Doidge said. “I don’t know anybody more beloved than Mary Anne Glazner.”

Mary Anne Glazner, who bought Smith’s Variety with her husband, Lytton, in 1976, died April 7 at 76 years old. It was two days before her birthday and only a week before Easter, her favorite holiday. She was the undisputed queen of Easter baskets and ribbons for every season and every community cause.

“No one could do the baskets like she could,” said her son, Jim Glazner.

Mary Anne Glazner’s bows adorned storefronts and houses throughout Mountain Brook for Sid Ortis’s and Sam Hodnett’s battles with cancer, the recent bomb threats at the Levite Jewish Community Center and other causes. But the everyday stories of people who came into Smith’s Variety interested her just as much. 

Longtime employee Kat Sudduth recalled a woman who had a fender bender in front of the store. As she stood crying on the sidewalk, Mary Anne Glazner left the store to cry and pray with her.

“If she knew you were hurting or upset, she would step in. And she always knew what to say,” Sudduth said. “She gave people peace.”

Her ability to remember children’s names and the little details of customers’ lives was a gift, Sudduth said. After decades of teaching music and piano lessons, Mary Anne Glazner had a habit of breaking into song to say good morning, entertain a child or just because. 

Doidge recalled bringing a news cameraman into Smith’s Variety to film a segment on small businesses.

“When I introduce him to her, she breaks out into song; she starts singing this grand Broadway show tune, and she wrapped his name into it,” Doidge said. “I think he really thought we had planned this, but we didn’t.”

Jim Glazner said his mother woke up every morning at 4 to eat a bowl of Cheerios, read the Bible and begin her list of prayer requests for other people. He recalls the way she would end every conversation with “I love you,” even on the announcement system at the store, and how excited she was to see Mary Poppins at Disney World with her grandchildren because she loved to sing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” with kids at the store.

Mary Anne Glazner’s husband, Lytton, died in 2003 and her daughter, Cynthia, lived only a few days after birth. Jim Glazner said one of his first thoughts after learning of his mother’s death was that she would be reunited with Cynthia again.

He said he felt fortunate that before his mother died, he had recalled a wreck they were in when he was young. Mary Anne Glazner threw her arm across her son, who was not buckled in, and while she broke her own back, he had nothing more than bits of glass on him. Jim Glazner remembered that crash on a recent trip with his mother and had the chance to thank her for likely saving his life.

‘The feel of Smith’s’

Smith’s Variety was central to Mary Anne Glazner’s life, and so Jim Glazner said many of his favorite memories revolve around her in the store, especially at the ribbon counter.

“She loved it because it was all crafts, and she was working with one child after another on hair bows or school projects,” he said.

Smith’s Variety opened in 1950, but the Glazners bought it in 1976, when it was in Mountain Brook Village. Jim Glazner recalled working in the stockroom as a 16-year-old and eventually joining his parents in the store full time in 1980. At the time, the store’s biggest sales day in its history was $1,500. In the ’90s, he recalls his parents celebrating their first million-dollar year.

His parents’ approach to the store was to stock it with items they liked, along with something Jim Glazner called the “spool of thread theory”: Customers might come in for one small item, but would rarely leave without buying a few others that caught their eye. 

And there was no such thing as too much customer service. Not only would the staff at Smith’s Variety wrap, assemble or deliver products to their customers, but Jim Glazner recalled his father leaving home on Christmas Day to put together a pinball game a family had purchased.

“It was a different retail philosophy,” he said.

When they relocated the store to Crestline Village in 2015, Jim Glazner said his mother’s biggest concern was that the candy counter, which had seen thousands of children press their noses up against the glass with dollars in hand, remain exactly the same.

“My mom was so afraid that we were going to lose the feel of Smith’s. So we had the whole candy counter area duplicated exactly,” Jim Glazner said. “We’re never changing that candy counter.”

Since then, customers have commented that even the smell of the store has remained exactly the same.

Outside Smith’s Variety, Mary Anne Glazner was an active member of Mountain Brook Baptist Church, the co-vice president of retail for Mountain Brook and Crestline villages and one of the most involved business owners Doidge said she has ever met. 

Amber Benson met Mary Anne Glazner through Leadership Mountain Brook and called her the program’s “biggest community champion.”

“Whenever I was in her presence, she treated me as if I was her No. 1 customer, her closest friend or even a dearest family member,” Benson said.

Mary Anne Glazner allowed Leadership Mountain Brook classes to sell their T-shirts and book, “Buttons Explores the Brook,” at Smith’s Variety and gladly promoted them to customers, Benson said. When she met the students to talk about the book and give them advice, she did so in her signature style.

“While visiting with us, she took the time to praise the students for their outstanding work and to motivate them as they entered the sales portion of the project. She broke out into a song and dance all about Buttons the cat and how he explored the city. Her enthusiasm was just what the students needed to motivate them into the next phase of their project,” Benson said.

Benson said she would like to create an annual award for Leadership Mountain Brook to give out to the business that best supports the program just as Mary Anne Glazner did.

‘Hole in the community’

When Mountain Brook’s own “bow lady” passed away, the city honored her in the most fitting way possible. Businesses and customers bought black-and-white bows from Smith’s Variety to hang on their doors in her honor. Jim Glazner said the proceeds from the bows will go to Camp Smile-A-Mile and Children’s Harbor. The hanging of these bows, along with Mountain Brook lowering its flag to half-staff in her memory, was “huge to me,” he said.

“I just miss my mom, and I can feel how many people miss her, also,” Jim Glazner said.

Mary Anne Glazner’s death left a “gaping hole in this community,” Doidge said. But those who loved her never have to wonder how she felt about them.

“She never left you without saying, ‘I love you.’ … You always knew where you stood with her,” Sudduth said. “We’re all better for having met her.”