Glenroy Emmons

Glenroy “Glen” Emmons, a resident of AdventHealth Care Center Overland Park, passed away on Monday, February 8th at the age of 95.

Glen was born and spent his formative years in the tiny village of Sikes in Winn Parish, Louisiana. He served stateside as a dentist’s assistant in the U.S. Navy during World War II, then attended Louisiana Tech University at Ruston, majoring in Spanish. There he met Marilyn Carroll, who became his wife of over fifty years. Together they raised three sons: Steve, Scott and Marc.

After completing a bachelor’s degree, Glen earned his master’s at Tulane, then a Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He taught briefly at Illinois College in Jacksonville and then at New Mexico State in Las Cruces, before securing a tenured position at CSU, where he taught until his retirement in 1993. In collaboration with his wife Marilyn and his colleague William Moseley, he compiled and published Spanish Literature, 1500-1700 , a bibliography that scholars of Spanish literature still use today.

Shortly after Marilyn’s death in 1999, Glen moved to Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, where he had close relatives. He soon became reacquainted with his childhood friend Jimmye Faye Box, and the two were married in 2002. Following her death in 2004, he met and married Maverneen Cunningham of Hot Springs Village. They remained married until her death in 2015. After suffering a stroke, he moved into a skilled nursing facility in Overland Park, near his son Scott.

Throughout his life, Glen had a wide-ranging interest in languages. He taught Portuguese in addition to Spanish, and also achieved a good reading knowledge of German and French. He traveled widely in Spain and Portugal, often with his family. A talented poet, he self-published several versions of his small collection of poems under various titles. He also self-published his memoir Country Boy , a nostalgic recollection of his childhood in rural Louisiana.

Those who knew Glen will remember him as a gentle, soft-spoken and generous man with a simple yet lively sense of humor. He is survived by his sons Steve, 63, and Scott, 61. A private family memorial ceremony will be scheduled for a later date. Donations in his memory can be sent to the United Negro College Fund, to which he was a lifetime donor.