Walter E. Gleckler; Orange Coast College Music Professor

Walter E. Gleckler, 72, for a generation an Orange Coast College music instructor who also taught sailing and served as music director at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach. Gleckler started in 1961 as director of choral music at the Costa Mesa college, where he taught voice and music theory and led several student musical productions. With his first wife and their three teenagers, Gleckler took a 10,000-mile sailing journey to the South Pacific during his 1974 sabbatical. When he returned, Gleckler set up the college’s Sailing Adventure Series, which he led for 20 years. Gleckler married his second wife, Anna, in 1980, retired from Orange Coast in 1986, and the couple led about 30 international charter boat cruises from 1980 to ’87. Gleckler also co-wrote “Sail by the Sun and the Stars,” a textbook about navigation, campus spokesman Jim Carnett said. In 1998 Gleckler self-published a how-to manual called “All About Cruising.” A service is planned at 2 p.m. Jan. 27 in the college’s Robert B. Moore Theatre. Survived by his wife, three children, two stepdaughters, 10 grandchildren, two brothers and a sister. On Thursday, at his Seal Beach home, of cancer.