46 SEPTEMBER 2019 THE ATLANTIC
the country sought his advice. His cafete-
rias landed on best-of lists.
When Kalafa finally visited Gluck at
the high school in November 2010, he
was stunningly blunt—federal regula-
tions were stupid, wellness committees
worthless, Michelle Obama incremental.
Kalafa’s account was admiring; she
described Gluck in her book as a passion-
ate visionary, a curmudgeon in all the
ways a changemaker has to be. Yet from
atop the mountain, Gluck was struggling.
The catering business he operated on the
side shut down, and in 2012 he and his
wife filed for bankruptcy. The paperwork
paints a portrait of collapsed finances and
on debts of more than $900,000. She says
her husband was ill and they had racked up
medical bills. Still, a neighbor told me that,
years later, so many UPS trucks made deliv-
eries to her house, she assumed Pascarelli
ran an Etsy shop.
Meanwhile, Wilson took her brother
to court in a property dispute over her
New Cana an home. The case dragged on
for eight years before they bitterly settled
in 2012, with Wilson agreeing to pay him
money she believed she didn’t owe.A REIGNING PRESUMPTION IN New
Canaan was that the town finances were
well in order. Such was the prerogativeunmet obligations: $140 in cash on hand,
a negative balance in a checking account,
79¢ in a savings account, unpaid rent, and
debt running pages and pages.
The sisters were in turmoil too. Their
brother alleged that while their mother,
Alba, was battling cancer, Pascarelli
and Wilson were siphoning money from
properties she owned. The fight grew
ugly; one night in 2001, the brother
rammed Wilson’s Mercedes with his
dump truck. Both sisters denied stealing
from Alba, but she cut them out of her
will before she died in 2002.
Pascarelli opened credit card after credit
card. In 2010, she declared bankruptcy