Glenn Leichman — husband, father, grandfather, Aikido master, psychologist, and global traveler — left a vital and indelible mark on the world.

An academic

My friend Glenn Alan Leichman was born in Los Angeles on Nov. 17, 1947 and died with family around him on Aug. 12, 2023. He touched many lives over his last decade on the Peninsula and led a life of vitality and adventure on the global stage.

Glenn’s father Nathan S. Leichman, a psychologist, immigrated from Russia when he was five. His mother, Diane Strakovksy Leichman, also from Russia, started a school for otherly-abled children (the Diane S. Leichman Career Preparatory and Transition Center — dianeleichman.lausd.org). Glenn followed in their footsteps: graduating from Ulysses S. Grant High School (Valley Glen, Los Angeles), then earning a degree in psychology (University of California, Los Angeles); and a Ph.D. in social psychology (London School of Economics).

More Coverage

tinyurl.com/Glenn-Oct-23-2018

His career included a professorship in social psychology at the London School of Economics, Kingston; adjunct faculty at Bastyr University; a private psychology practice; and an associate professorship in clinical psychology (University of Washington, Seattle). Glenn was also instrumental in creating an alternative middle school in Seattle, now part of Salmon Bay K-8 (salmonbayk8.seattleschools.org).

Loose in the world

Along with these considerable achievements, Glenn threw his boundless energy into many other arenas, developing interests which capitalized on his passion for physicality, spirituality, and travel. In the 70s, he met his first wife, Terry Furchgott, now an nationally known painter, and they traveled around the world together, studying Buddhist meditation in Sri Lanka. (Terry: www.terryfurchgott.com.)

When Terry was pregnant with their first child, Damon, they settled in Seattle and joined Congregation Beth Shalom. Later they began studying Aikido, and eventually Glenn opened two Aikido dojos, in Seattle and on the shores of Willapa Bay. He was sensei, or teaching master, to many on the Peninsula — also conducting workshops for children — and adults both in the United States and internationally: Japan, Sweden, England and elsewhere. (See tinyurl.com/6594rz2w and tinyurl.com/5n8ybb9r.) After many years of training, Glenn was honored to receive the rank of 5th Dan in Aikido from the school of Sheishiro Endo Shihan.

Glenn never lost that travel bug. As Damon relates, “I was conceived in India during my parents round the world adventures and I was born in London. Then they began their life in Seattle, but we continued to travel. We had family vacations in Galliano, Pender, and Guemes island, and toured the south of France, Spain and Italy. We hiked in Patagonia and in Nepal; we trekked to the ancient mountain kingdom of Mustang.”

A chameleon

It’s nearly impossible to capture Glenn’s life succinctly because, as daughter Chloe says, “Glenn was so many things to so many people, and he was so many things to himself. He was bursting with all the curiosities, ambitions and adventures he couldn’t wait to have. It was infectious, that quality of excitement and lust for life. He had major FOMO [fear of missing out] and it drove him to do as much as possible all the time.”

“We traveled a lot together — we went backpacking and rode our bikes and went skiing and read fairy tales and ate frankfurters and wrote in our journals and listened to Jimi Hendrix and got so tired from pushing ourselves to the limit that we fell asleep with cramps in our legs. When I got old enough to go abroad myself, or go away to college, he wanted to do all the things I was doing. So we were never far apart from one another, it was never long between phone calls or visits together.”

As Chloe says about her children. “Fernande and Odilon were his true delights. He wanted to be in their lives as much as possible, to read to them, swim at the beach with them, take them to school and celebrate all the Jewish holidays, to pass onto the next generation all the rituals and traditions.”

Ben, Glenn’s youngest son, relayed a poignant memory illustrative of Glenn’s magic. “I remember it had snowed in Seattle all night one time and not just snowed but it was sort of a white-out. We were in the house together — just the two of us — and dad said, ‘Get your jacket, let’s go out in it!’ He was really excited about it, and I didn’t want to get my jacket or go out. But we did — we walked around for 20 or 30 minutes. When it’s happening, it’s hard to have the ability to appreciate a moment, to appreciate that it’s going to be anything important, or a memory that you’ll keep forever. But it was. He still had that child-like wonder. He still had that.”

Glenn was responsible for Ben’s love of movies. When Ben was a teenager, they went to movies nearly every Friday — the old black and white classics. Ben won the World Championship in Movie Trivia for 2019, and also credits Glenn for his introduction to music. (As a musician, Ben is known as Ben Batemen: www.youtube.com/c/benbateman)

Community

Terry fondly remembers daily walks in the Seattle Arboretum; although divorced, they remained best friends throughout their lives. “Glenn wasn’t a perfect person — he was often self-absorbed and sometimes his energy was overwhelming, but he was a wonderful partner, friend, father and grandfather. He loved to cook. He was also in a men’s group that met weekly, starting in that era of Robert Bly. He had five or six best friends from that group. In the last several years he was part of a think tank called ‘Discovery.’ Community was always important to him, and he was a vital part of so many different communities.”

“In the last several years he had health challenges. Even though he was walking with sticks and had pain in his foot, he still walked four miles with me most days — he rode his electric bike everywhere, even in the rain. He was working out with a kettle bell three times a week, plus he helped build tiny houses for the homeless and felt very rewarded by that. He was disciplined, such a physical person, and determined to keep doing it all as long as he could.”

Just last month Glenn traveled to Sardinia to be with Chloe, her husband Sasha’mani and the grandchildren. He may have had an impending intimation of serious health issues, but Chloe says, “He would not have missed that trip for the world. I think he knew what was coming and he wanted to be with us one more time, even if he was going to be struggling to breathe or walk by the end. He drank his first aperol spritz, swam in the Mediterranean, and laughed at the notes his grandchildren wrote to him. He went out in a classically Glenn way, dramatic, like a flame, so bright and then all of a sudden, gone. We miss him so much and we know he’s watching over us all, proud of everything he created and everything he left behind.”

Go deep

One mutual friend of ours wrote, “Glenn had this personal uniqueness, he had the ability to ‘go deep’ into himself as well as into others in the course of conducting his unique life, part of which was as an internationally-acclaimed Aikido master, not to mention his accomplishments as a fellow human being encountering life on the planet with the rest of mankind. We all agree that Glenn was a ‘one-off’ fellow who each of us encountered in different ways, not unlike the blind men encountering different parts of the elephant together. He left us much too soon.”

Glenn called me before his Italy trip and we had the chance to say our “I love you’s,” not knowing the finality of that. It’s nearly impossible to believe his indomitable energy is gone from the world, but maybe it isn’t — his charming and inspired children, his bi-continental grandchildren, and those memories we might have thought trivial at the time, as Ben says, still remain. Dear readers, carpe diem!

• • •

Glenn is survived by Terry Furchgott; Damon Leo Leichman (wife Sarah Leichman); Chloe Francois (husband Sasha’mani Francois); Benjamin Leichman; and two grandchildren.