Glenn S. Allen, Jr. was born January 8, 1914, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His parents were Glenn Allen, Sr. and Annette Brenner Allen. He had three siblings: Jollie, Barbara and Rosemary. Allen graduated from Western State High School in 1932. He attended Amherst College in Massachusetts during the 1933-1934 academic year. Due to financial hardships of the Great Depression, he did not return. Instead, he enrolled in Kalamazoo College, graduating in 1936. Columbia Law School then awarded him a law degree in 1939. Later, that year, he was elected Kalamazoo city commissioner. In 1939-1940, he also served as a law clerk to Michigan Supreme Court justices William Potter and Emerson Boyles. In 1941, Allen began practicing law in Kalamazoo.
World War II changed Allen’s career path. He was drafted in 1942 and served in the United States Army. He became an assistant Judge Advocate of the Third Army’s 94th Division and a legal advisor to General George S. Patton. He earned four battle stars and a bronze star. After the war, Allen returned to Kalamazoo and to politics. He served as that city’s mayor from 1951 to 1959. He was a delegate to the Michigan constitutional convention of 1961-1962. He made an unsuccessful run for State Treasurer in 1962. Michigan Governor George Romney then appointed him State Controller. Following a governmental reorganization, Romney named Allen Budget Director in 1966. Allen remained in that position until 1971. That year, he assumed new duties as Governor William Milliken’s Special Counsel for Legal, Fiscal and Legislative Affairs. In 1973, Milliken appointed Allen to fill a vacancy on the Michigan Court of Appeals. He began his judgeship in January 1974. He was elected to a six-year Court of Appeals term later that year and re-elected in 1980. He retired from the Court in 1987.
Allen was married three times. He and his first wife, Virginia Verdier Allen, wed in 1944. Their union resulted in two children: Holly and Susan. Virginia died in 1974. In 1979, Allen remarried to Marion Turner Smith. Marion died in 1983. Allen married Marjorie Cole Tracy in 1985, and Marjorie died in 2000. Glen S. Allen, Jr. passed away on November 6, 2001. He was survived by his two children, three grandchildren, two step-daughters and one great-grandchild.
This collection is divided into nine series: Subject Files, Appointment Books, Court of Appeals Case Call and Assignments, Photographs, Scrapbooks and Photograph Albums, Newspapers and Newspaper Clippings, Certificates, Awards, Plaques, Framed Documents, Papers of Glenn Allen, Sr. and Annette Allen (Parents of Glenn Allen, Jr.), and Papers of Marion Turner Allen (Second Wife of Glenn Allen, Jr.).
