He’s made thousands of crosses for shooting victims. Now, Aurora’s ‘Cross Guy’ is retiring

Greg Zanis of Aurora is retiring from his cross-building mission after 23 years

By Katlyn Smith | Daily Herald

Greg Zanis of Aurora stands in front of a display of more than 750 crosses he built to represent each homicide death in 2016 in Chicago. Zanis is retiring from his cross-building mission after 23 years. | Daily Herald

There was something different about these last two crosses.

The pair looked just the like the thousands of other crosses made by Aurora carpenter Greg Zanis. White, wooden, 3 feet tall. Red heart in the center.

Another school shooting summoned Zanis to California last month to bring crosses to a makeshift memorial for two teenagers killed by a fellow student at a high school in suburban Los Angeles.

As usual, Zanis wrote the names of the victims - Dominic Blackwell, 14, and Gracie Anne Muehlberger, 15 - in black marker across the crosses.

But instead of heading to the next memorial in what has become an exhausting, reflexive ritual, Zanis, 69, decided to step away from his cross-building mission and hand over the role to another ministry for victims of mass shootings and natural disasters.

”I’m not a counselor. It’s just way more than I can handle,” Zanis said Thursday.

The numbers behind his Crosses for Losses nonprofit are staggering: Zanis estimates he’s built 27,521 crosses over nearly a quarter century.

He’s kept track of all the memorials, filling 79 notebooks with names and ages of victims.

For more on this story, read the Daily Herald.

Greg Zanis of Crosses for Losses crafted the same crosses — 3’ x 6” tall, 2’ x 9” wide, a 1-foot heart in the center — for tragedies everywhere but Chicago. “Chicago’s are signature crosses,” he said in January 2018. “For Chicago’s, violence that continues as opposed to a mass shooting, the crossbar sandwiches the heart of the cross, so it’s like the heart is being hugged.”

Greg Zanis, of Crosses For Losses | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

1 of 9

Greg Zanis, a retired carpenter from Aurora, built nearly 800 crosses for every Chicago homicide victim of 2016, which are on display in a vacant lot near South Bishop and West 56th streets, Thursday afternoon, Jan. 11, 2018. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

2 of 9

Greg Zanis, a retired carpenter from Aurora, displays a selection of the 2,000 crosses he built for America’s gun massacre victims in a vacant lot near South Bishop and West 56th streets, Thursday afternoon, Jan. 11, 2018. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

3 of 9

Greg Zanis, of Crosses For Losses, searches through some 638 wooden crosses honoring Chicago homicide victims that he stored in a vacant lot in Englewood. It was January 2018, and he was preparing for his “America Never Forgotten: A Crusade to Honor Our Lost” gathering in Washington, D.C. of families who’d lost loved ones to gun violence, all carrying his crosses.

Greg Zanis, of Crosses For Losses | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

4 of 9

A cross for Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer by Greg Zanis, of Crosses for Losses, sits behind Supt. Eddie Johnson as he speaks during a press conference outside the Thompson Center in 2018. | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

5 of 9

Greg Zanis, of Crosses For Losses | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

6 of 9

Before his death from bladder cancer Monday, Greg Zanis of Crosses for Losses had erected more than 26,000 memorials for the murdered — called to do so by God, he said. In January 2018, he was picking up some crosses honoring Chicago homicide victims from a vacant lot in Englewood where he stored them.

Greg Zanis, of Crosses For Losses | Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times file photo

7 of 9

8 of 9

Greg Zanis of Aurora, mounts crosses on the front lawn of a Gage Park home, one for each of the six people found dead inside the house in 2016. | Andy Grimm/Sun-Times file photo

9 of 9