Slain jeweler 'felt there was always a need for his services,' colleague says

When crime began stalking the neighborhood near William Glatz Jewelers, a family business on Rising Sun Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia, Bill Glatz armed himself and dug in his heels.

"I said, 'Bill, why are you still here?' You could tell the whole neighborhood was changing," said Jack Dillon, the insurance agent for the respected jeweler, whose German-immigrant father opened the jewelry store more than a half-century ago.

"He said, 'People depend on me. A lot of them are widows and widowers, and none of them drive,' " Dillon said. "Bill felt they were just depending on him for jewelry repair" in their neighborhood.

Glatz, 67, died Thursday after exchanging gunfire with two men trying to rob the shop, police said. One of the assailants died in the shoot-out. Police have reviewed the store's surveillance tapes and are seeking another gunman. A third suspect is believed to have driven a getaway car, police said.

Al Taubenberger, president of the Greater Northeast Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, said Glatz, a graduate of Frankford High School, moved to Bucks County about two decades ago but remained loyal to the family's first store in the 6400 block of Rising Sun Avenue near Passmore Street. Glatz's wife, Donna, has run a second shop that the family opened in Jamison, Bucks County. It was closed Friday with a sign in the window citing the family's emergency.

"He had the guts to stay and he felt there was always a need for his services," said Taubenberger, 57, who remembered Glatz as a "tall, thin" man, who had a heart problem several years ago but looked fit and was almost always smiling.

"He did a lot of repairs - changing a setting, making a ring bigger," said Taubenberger, who bought wedding bands for himself and his wife from Glatz in 1998.

"He was a master jeweler," Taubenberger said, "using the skills he learned from his dad, who knew how to fix cuckoo clocks and all kinds of watches."

For children growing up in the neighborhood, a visit to the shop, where dozens of cuckoo clocks chimed on the hour, was the stuff of lifelong memories. It wasn't just a jewelry shop, it was like a neighborhood amusement center.

"I'm not the only one who witnessed that," Taubenberger said. "It was kind of neat. I can't think of a time when I didn't know the Glatzes or hear my parents talking about them.

"To this day, they had a pretty good collection of Hummels" and other German bric-a-brac, Taubenberger said, including small, humidity-sensitive "German weather houses," in which a female figurine in a dirndl comes out on sunny days, and a German man with an umbrella appears when it's raining. "As a kid, my parents always had one on the wall."

Commitment to family tradition, and fierce loyalty to longtime customers, kept Bill Glatz clinging to the old neighborhood despite its risks and his range of other options, Taubenberger said.

"I would hope the family gets a sense of how loved Bill was," he said. "This is just a terrible tragedy and we cry along with them."