Leesburg Woman Remembers Steinbrenner
Written by Michael Harris
Glenna Hancock was working on a fresh-brewed pot of coffee at her Leesburg home when she heard the news that George Steinbrenner, iconic owner of the New York Yankees, had suffered a heart attack late Monday night at his home in Tampa.
Hancock dropped what she was doing and put in a call to the Yankees office in Tampa. She can do that.
And when she had a Yankees representative on the phone, she also carries the clout to receive the news first hand. George Steinbrenner had passed Tuesday morning at the age of 80.
“You’re in shock,” she said. “You know, you can’t talk at first. I am so grateful to him and what I’m most grateful for is that he was a true friend to me. Anytime someone mentioned my name to him, he had something nice to say about me.”
Hancock, 58, was hired by the Yankees in 1977 to work in their public relations department, but on the first day she was there, Mr. Steinbrenner’s personal secretary had quit. Then Yankees president, Gabe Paul, told Glenna that they knew she was hired as a public relations assistant but asked if she could fill in temporarily. She didn’t care what she did, all she cared was she was working for the New York Yankees.
She stayed on as Mr. Steinbrenner’s secretary for nearly two years before cold weather and the fact she was a Florida-bred woman had her move on and back to Florida. But in that time she created a close friendship with Mr. Steinbrenner that lasted all the way to today.
“He’d call me about every six months after I left,” Glenna said. “He was so fatherly-like. There were two men in my life – my father and him.”
Glenna said that although Mr. Steinbrenner came across as gruff and this tough guy in the media, he was far from it in everyday life.
“He could do things for you that were so amazing,” she said. “This is going to sound really stupid, but he was working at the office late one night and his driver was always with him. We had this really bad snow storm and he did not want me driving home that night. I guess he just thought ‘she’s from Florida she doesn’t know how to drive in snow.’ He and his driver drove me all the way home that night which was out in Queens and they had to go to Manhattan.
“To me he went out of his way that night to be kind to me.”
She did say one of the first things she would do was send a nice letter to Mr. Steinbrenner’s daughter, Jenny. She says she knew Jenny better than her younger sister Jessica, was very small at the time Glenna worked for the Yankees.
“His family was always nice to me, I’m glad to see his children carry on their father’s legacy,” she said.
And his generosity didn’t extend to just Glenna, his family or even Derek Jeter. Steinbrenner was always generous to many fans, especially children.
“He would come off of a flight from somewhere or he had been to an occasion somewhere and I would get stacks of papers or cards that he had made and he would say ‘take care of this,’” Glenna says. “And it would be hat to this kid or a note to this kid or a jacket to this kid. As far as I could see, if he told you he would do something he did it.”
Perhaps Glenna was one of the few who was able to get away with calling Mr. Steinbrenner by his first name.
“Well there were a few others in the office,” she said. “I’d call him George if nobody was around.”
Years after Glenna left the Yankees, Steinbrenner and her would always keep in touch. And if he was in Orlando, there were times he would give her a call and just ask her to go to a ball game and have a beer and some peanuts with him.
“I’m sad. Sad, sad, sad, it’s just awful. I’m just grateful I can say that George Steinbrenner was my friend.”
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