Edmund Glazer even laughed quietly. He was a calming, logical man, a problem solver, an unassuming gentleman for whom swearing was anathema. Even though he was the youngest of four siblings who were raised in Zambia and South Africa, with his ability to untangle life knots so adroitly, he was the family’s go-to guy. “Tell me more,” he would say, gently touching the other person’s arm. “What can I do to help?” Whenever he visited his sister, Beatrice Sandler, and her daughters, he would immediately stock their refrigerator with groceries and throw out the stale goods from his previous visit.

He and his wife, Candy, had recently moved into a house outside Boston. He would eagerly call his sister, hold up the phone and say exultantly, “Can you hear that babbling brook?”

In their dream house, Mr. Glazer, 41, fancied himself a handyman, and would take his young son, Nathan, on forays to Home Depot, hunting for the one tool that would improve his hapless skills.

If he was less than dazzling with wood, Mr. Glazer was a Mr. Fix-it at his company, MRV Communications, where he had risen to chief financial officer. On the evening of Sept. 10, he got a call from MRV’s home office in Los Angeles, asking for his help on a major project. In his obliging way, Mr. Glazer boarded Flight 11 the next morning.

Edmund Glazer, 41, was vice president of finance and administration and chief financial officer at MRV Communications, a Chatsworth, Calif.-based telecommunications company. On Tuesday, Glazer was on his way to the headquarters from his home in Wellesley, Mass.

“He called me to let me know that he had made it on the plane,” said his wife, Candy. “He said they were about to take off and he had to turn off the cell phone. I’m assuming nothing was going on then, because he sounded normal. We said our byes and he said he would call me when he got there [Los Angeles].”

Born in Zambia, Glazer moved to Los Angeles when he was 17 to attend the University of Southern California. “Everyone knows the U.S. has the best universities and he decided he wanted to study here,” said Candy Glazer. “He liked it so much he decided to stay.”

Profile courtesy of Chicago Tribune – Profile published in the NYT on June 2, 2002.

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