BY KAREN BOSSICK

John Glenn, the consummate story teller, died Friday at a Boise hospital after suffering an allergic reaction related to back surgery.

The artistic director for Company of Fools was flown to St. Luke’s Medical Center in Boise after he suffered a medical emergency on May 31.

Glenn, 55, had undergone back surgery in Ketchum to relieve neck pain that was severe enough that he sometimes wore a neck brace. He suffered complications following the surgery and was placed in a medically induced coma with the idea that he would gradually be brought out of it.

Glenn’s closest friends reeled this weekend from the shock of losing a friend who had been very much alive just a little over a week earlier.

“I just can’t believe it,” said Joel Vilinsky, who like Glenn followed Company of Fools to the Wood River Valley from Richmond, Va. “He was a loving man and a gentle man—I’m sure everyone will tell you that.”

Indeed, Glenn was always looking for stories of the heart that would bring community together and make the world a little better in the plays he and his longtime cohort Denise Simone chose to stage at Company of Fools.

And he was always so eloquent and thoughtful in his analyses of the plays, as he talked about the “touching, surprising journey” he hoped the plays would take audiences on.

He endeared himself to the youngsters of the community as he played the Snail with the Mail in “A Year with Frog and Toad.”

And John got serious, too, as he presented a poignant but powerful monologue of a priest who had received a letter from a dear friend’s son describing how he had to tell his dad he was really a woman in a man’s body. The monologue was part of a trilogy of monologues presented in conjunction with the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ “Role Play” exhibition.

Occasionally, Glenn would also take the stage of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony to retell the story of “Peter and the Wolf” and other childhood favorites.

He claimed that April Fools' Day was one of his favorite days of the year because that’s when Company of Fools always unveiled its upcoming season.

He loved stories that gave audiences “a lovely smile.”

“It just feels warm and it feels cozy—just what you want to feel this time of the year,” he said, of “A Year with Frog and Toad,” which was presented as the Fools’ Christmas gift to the community.

Of the more melodramatic “August Osage County: “It’s story telling that holds a mirror to some of the characters and situations we recognize in our everyday lives.”

During some 40 years in professional theatre Glenn worked on more than 250 productions in 41 states.

He moved to Hailey in 2000 with his husband R.L. Rowsey, music director for Company of Fools and an artistic director for the Sun Valley Summer Symphony School of Music and Caritas Chorale.

He had been a touring actor and artistic director of Barksdale Theatre prior to moving here. He had also spent several years as company manager/stage manager for John Davidson in national tours of “State Fair” and “Bully!”

He either directed, acted in or was  involved with the design aspects of more than 150 Company of Fools productions over 21 years in Hailey, including lighting, set and costume design.

He delighted in telling of the finds he’d found for theater props in obscure places like an antique store in Shoshone or how he’d found a site for “Church Lady Dresses” on eBay when searching for rich Texas socialite outfits for “Das Barbecu.”

His directing favorites with Company of Fools included “Grey Gardens,” “Peter and the Starcatcher,” “The Syringa Tree,” “Shipwrecked!” “Bus Stop,” “The 39 Steps” and “Violet.”  But, then, that was before he directed such plays as “Grounded” and “A Day in Hollywood,” a spin-off of the Marx Brothers.

In November 2016 Glenn received the 2016 Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in recognition of his significant contributions to the arts. And Company of Fools was honored with the Idaho Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2004.

“In my 35 years working in professional theatre, I have never encountered an artist with such expansive talent as John Glenn,” said Dense Simone at the time. “Day after day, year after year, he gives wholeheartedly of himself and shares his many gifts as a service to our community, to our great state and to the national arts dialogue. John is, quite simply, the definition of Excellence in the Arts.”

John Glenn was also grateful—grateful and amazed at the community he lived in and the life that he had carved out for himself.

As he was always telling audiences: “We’re just so amazed and grateful that you choose to be part of our family.”