Stephen Glenn Krochmal

Glenn was born in Raleigh, NC to Janet Hanft Krochmal and Arnold Krochmal. His parents were divorced while he was an infant and he and his mother moved to Richmond, VA to live with the extended Ullman family (Granddaddy Leo, Auntie Marion, L.E., Sister and Mimi, and John) on Monument Avenue. He and his mother lived there until Glenn was about 8 years old when they moved back to Raleigh.

Glenn’s entrepreneurship soon developed when he took on a paper route about age 11 and completed his route on a bicycle that he won while in the Boy Scouts by selling the most potato chips during a fund-raising event. But it wasn’t all work for little Glenn as he spent many summers at Camp Sea Gull Seafarer near Arapahoe, NC on the Neuse River that taught him his love of the sea and sailing.

His love of the sea led him to join the Navy at age 17 where he became an Electronics Technician (ET1) and he served on several different ships, including the USS Little Rock (CLG-4), the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, where he had the arduous duty of having to be stationed on the French Riviera, and the USNS Dutton (T-AGS-22), an oceanographic survey ship, homeported in Belfast, N. Ireland, engaging in some top secret projects, which he loved to talk about. There was the time that he scrambled NATO when he and a fellow shipmate constructed a floating box with a flashing light and threw it over board in order to mess with the Russian sailors on the Vertikal who kept following their ship, and who had deliberately cut across the line towing the Dutton’s survey equipment. When the watch saw the flashing light in the sea, the captain assumed it was a Russian submarine rendezvousing with the Vertikal and NATO was contacted and they scrambled some fighter jets. Then there was that time in 1966 when a B-52 crashed near Palomares, Spain with nuclear bombs aboard and the Dutton was called in to locate the one bomb that had fallen into the ocean since the Dutton’s surveying equipment was such that it “could find a beer can on the bottom of the Mariana Trench.” Then there was that time…….well, you get the picture.

Glenn served in the Navy from 1960 to 1968, when he left in order to better support his growing family with his first wife, Kathleen, whom he met and married in Belfast, N. Ireland. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he worked for several “tech” companies, but when the last company went bankrupt and he was suddenly without a job, he needed to buy health insurance for his family until such time he found new employment. “Sister” told him to contact a friend, Esther Pincus, who was an insurance saleswoman in Virginia Beach in order to purchase health insurance. Esther soon pitched the idea to Glenn that he should become an insurance agent, even though he told her “I can’t think of anything less I’d rather do, other than be a pianist in a brothel.” However, with 4 children by then, he needed to support his growing family, so he accepted Esther’s offer.

Glenn enjoyed a successful career in the insurance industry first as an agent, then as an agency manager as well as a Vice-President at Lincoln National’s Home Office in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After leaving Lincoln National, he and his family (5 children by then) moved to California where he continued in the insurance industry, until he eventually started his own investment advisory business as an SEC Registered Investment Advisor.

Glenn is survived by his loving wife of 34 years, Bonnie, and his five children from his first marriage to Kathleen, Stephen Krochmal, Jr., Rosalie (Owens), Mark, David and Clare, and 8 grandchildren, Riley & Kyle Krochmal, Katrina, Ryan and Zachery Owens, and Fiona Stathis. He is also survived by his two half-brothers, Maurice & Walter Krochmal.

There will be a Memorial Service at Nelsen Funeral Home, 3785 Strawberry Plains Rd, Williamsburg, VA 23188 at 2:00 PM on Sunday, February 27, 2022.

Fond memories and expressions of sympathy may be shared at www.NelsenWilliamsburg.com for the Krochmal family.