‘If you’re reading this I’m dead, and I really liked you,’ professor writes in posthumous postcards

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As It Happens6:20She sent more than 100 postcards on behalf of her dad: ‘If you’re reading this I’m dead, and I really liked you’

Don Glickman was “a very frank person,” according to his daughter.

It’s a trait that held through until his dying days, when he decided he didn’t want a funeral or an obituary. 

Instead, the retired design professor opted for something more straightforward — postcards, delivered posthumously to his friends and favourite students, with the simple message: “If you’re reading this I’m dead, and I really liked you.”

“I don’t think that the people that received this postcard were surprised at all by the message,” Leah Glickman, Don’s only daughter, told As It Happens host Nil Kӧksal. “I didn’t send it to anyone who he didn’t like.”

‘A last act of design’

Despite his blunt death notice, delivered in bold Helvetica font alongside a scowling selfie (which he chose himself), Glickman, it seems, liked a lot of people.

Since he died on Nov. 11 at the age of 94, Leah has sent out more than 100 postcards, some to addresses she collected from him in his final days, and others from his personal correspondence that she’s been organizing since he died.

She says more will be mailed soon. 

“If he liked you, you knew,” she said. “And I knew.”

Leah Glickman wrote a message on the back of her father’s posthumous postcards. (Submitted by Leah Glickman)

While the words on front of the postcard were written by Glickman himself, the back contains a message from Leah. 

“Dearest friends and family, after 94 years on this planet, my dad has departed. His last days were filled with butter pecan ice cream, flamenco music, and a view he adored, and the love he finally accepted,” she wrote.

“In a last act of design and Glickman ethos, he asked that this postcard be created, photo and text chosen by him. He was who he was till the very end.”

Glickman, who had congestive heart failure, died at home in Anacortes, Wash. Leah was by his side, holding his hand. 

‘It is exactly him,’ writes former student

Before retiring in the late ‘90s, Glickman was a professor of design at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and later the University at Buffalo.

Leah says he developed close bonds with many of his students, some of which lasted long after they graduated.

“I believe that his greatest effect in the world was being a teacher,” she said. “And he felt that. He knew it about himself. I think it was the thing he was the most proud of.”

Leah says her father was a deeply curious person. (Submitted by Leah Glickman)

He definitely made an impact on Jason Snape, a former student of Glickman’s, and a recent postcard recipient.

“I trusted him as I navigated my way through finding an answer to a problem,” Snape told the Washington Post, which first reported this story.

Snape followed in his professor’s path and became design teacher for more than a decade. He now works for a remodeling firm in Atlanta.

When he received the postcard in the mail this week, he wrote a tribute to his former professor on Instagram.

“When I discovered and fell in love with design and problem solving, it was thanks to projects that he assigned to us. And when I reached back out to him as I learned how to become a teacher, he was just as clear and focused and open. He is easily the biggest reason I was better at teaching than anything else I’ve done.”

“His biggest compliment from school? ‘Snape, you’re so f—in weird! I love it!’ I hope you all had a teacher like him.”

As for the postcard?

“It is exactly him in irreverence and care,” Snape wrote.

Don and Leah Glickman visit Mount Rushmore in 2017. (Submitted by Leah Glickman)

Snape’s post went viral, and Glickman’s postcards have now been featured in several news outlets. 

Glickman didn’t like receiving too much attention, but his daughter believes he would have been honoured to be spoken of so highly by a former student. 

“I think he would have feigned annoyance, made the face that is in that photograph, maybe stuck his tongue out and grimaced a little bit,” she said. 

“In the end, we all get the love we deserve.”