Man who built almost 27,000 crosses for mass shooting victims retires
Greg Zanis grew up Greek Orthodox and spent years as a Baptist, but he made memorials for people of all faiths for almost twenty years.
By RACHEL WOLFGreg Zanis places crosses bearing the names of the victims killed in a shooting at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas, U.S., May 21, 2018(photo credit: JONATHAN BACHMAN/REUTERS)
Greg Zanis has built white crosses, Stars of David and crescent moons for victims of mass shootings for decades. Now Zanis is retiring and plans to teach others to build the memorial symbols he’s been building since 1996. In August, Zanis told CNN that he has built 26,680 crosses, estimating that 21,000 of them were for victims of mass shootings."I am tired," he told CNN. "I suffer a lot when I do [the crosses]. It's very hard on me. I had the weight of the world on my shoulders."After almost twenty years of traveling the US and bringing the memorials to where they were needed, Zanis was stunned in February when a gunman killed five people in Aurora, Illinois, his hometown.He also noted that the August shooting in El Paso, Texas, was a “breaking point.” 22 people were killed and 24 were injured during the shooting."I hadn't slept for two days, it was 106 degrees and I collapsed from the pressure when I heard there were two more victims of the mass shooting," he told The Chicago Tribune. “I was trotting around the country putting 5,000-6,000 miles on my truck not even thinking of my family missing me. I did it time and again. I jumped in my truck to go to the Paradise fire in California without telling anybody.”He did not finalize his plans to retire until the shooting at a US Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, which left three dead and eight wounded, according to the newspaper.“I got as far as Indianapolis and turned back,” Zanis told The Chicago Tribune. “I decided I wasn’t going to do this anymore.”Zanis grew up Greek Orthodox and spent years as a Baptist, but he made memorials for people of all faiths. He told NBC Chicago that he “felt like I was carrying the weight of the country on my shoulders.”Saying that each year the job became more and more demanding, Zanis discussed what his crosses, Stars of David and crescent moons stand for. “These are people, not numbers. It’s not gay people in Orlando, it’s not Sikhs in Milwaukee, it’s not Jewish people in Pennsylvania, it’s not black people in Chicago," he told NBC Chicago. "This is our country. We’re a family; we’re American first.”
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