Bob Gluhareff
By joe on Mar 3, 2008 in Faith
I’m not excited that this is the topic of my first real post to this blog. But I can’t seem to get this story out of my head…
I graduated from Naples (FL) High School in 74. There were a few teachers that had an impact on me. One of them was my history teacher, Bob Gluhareff. I honestly don’t remember anything specific I learned in his classes, but I remember that he seemed to care about kids. He worked some with a nearby church that held battle of the bands. I was running away from the church at the time, so most of his efforts were lost on me. But he paid attention to me and that little connection stayed with me.My high school friend, and class clown, Bobcat Barber emailed me this weekend to say Bob had killed himself. It turns out Bob wasn’t very good with money. He may have started out with a heart for kids, but somewhere along the way he was seduced by money. He ran a school for troubled teens called Wellspring Academy. A few years ago, he plead guilty to stealing the tuition money, to the tune of about $500K. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. When he didn’t show up to start serving his sentence, they went looking for him and found him on a back road with a bullet in his head.
I’m a Christian. I believe we are all sinners and I’m never shocked when someone does something really awful. I believe in salvation by grace, so I’m never even shocked when the something awful was done by a believer. But this news has rattled me. I don’t know if Bob was a messed up believer or if he was a religious charlatan. Either way, it is tragic that someone can end up in such a dark place.
God have mercy on Bob Gluhareff and God have mercy on us all…
I graduated from Naples High in 1975. Even though I do not feel any joy from other people’s troubles, my experiences and memories of Bob Gluhareff are vastly different from Joe’s. I remember running for junior class office along with two of my other friends in 1974. We all had long hair at the time and my brother Bill was in Gluhareff’s history class when he referred to my friends and I as “creeps that crawled out of a dunghill”. About two years later, he had to leave Naples because he was caught embezzling money from Moorings Presbeterian Church. I still have the letter the church sent out to all their members.
It seems to me that Bob Gluhareff had been dishonest for at least the last 30 year.
ps. I saw Bobcat a couple of years ago. Tell him I said hey.
Jonathan | Jun 6, 2008 | Reply