Personal Ministry: Sugar Grove man makes crosses for memorials near and far

A day after the Feb. 14 shootings at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, six glimmering white crosses appeared in the snow on a hill across from Cole Hall. Five stood upright, bearing the names of the shooting victims with a rose attached; the sixth lay in the snow, nameless. “It's a very emotional time putting the crosses up,” Sugar Grove carpenter Greg Zanis said. “Just going to NIU, you just can't stop thinking how devastated these families are. When I saw the hill, it was calling out to me, this is like cross hill, it was perfect.” It wasn't the first calling for Zanis. Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., called in 1999 while Zanis was on a family vacation in Florida, and he answered by preparing 15 crosses, driving them across the country and constructing a memorial for the grieving families. Whether it's car accidents or murders, anywhere someone is grieving, Zanis has made a personal ministry of delivering memorials. After responding to a number of school shootings since Columbine, the unthinkable happened on Valentine's Day. And it happened nearly in his backyard. “I'm just shocked,” he said, shaking his head. “I guess I've been in denial. Columbine was a thousand miles away, Red Lake (High School in northern Minnesota) is 750 miles, and then it happens right here in a school I used to go to. I mean, it's our school here, and it's no longer safe.” In a corner of his Sugar Grove basement, Zanis, 57, was feverishly priming a stack of wood crosses piled on his worktable. Methodically, he lacquered on the bright white paint as he's done for more than 10,000 crosses before. He described the crosses as a labor of love as he smiled between brush strokes. “I'm a carpenter - everywhere around you're going to see my artwork,” Zanis said as he looked at the mounds of crosses in his basement. “Giving my first fruits (to God) isn't about the five-dollar crosses; it's the gas, it's the time I make to do that, whenever. I'm the right guy to do it because if I do something, I do it thoroughly.” And often. But he never signs his name to his work and shies away from news media when questioned about the memorials. At NIU, he waited until reporters had left to attend a news conference before he started the hillside memorial that many call “Cross Hill.” He has seen how it has grown into a place of remembrance for the NIU community. “People are going out and buying long-stem roses,” Zanis said, “and just throwing them on the ground by the hundreds of dozens. I was so shocked at all the teddy bears, huskies and candles. They did what I did, they get to go and put something there to remember. It's a personal trek up that hill.” For Jillian Martinez, a Carpentersville resident and a freshman at NIU, that memorial is very personal. She was sitting in the Cole Hall auditorium when Steven Kazmierczak killed five people and injured 16 before turning the gun on himself. Martinez had seen the iconic memorial on TV but said visiting it in person Friday when she got back to campus was surreal. “It's a good reminder,” Martinez said, “but it's scary to remember that day when the building is right there. It was really awesome to know that the university has been involved with the things piled under the crosses.” Cross-making started out as a personal mission for Zanis. His first cross was made in 1996 for a 6-year-old child killed in Aurora. The child's mother, knowing that Zanis was a carpenter, asked him to make a cross for her son for $20. He made the cross and told her to keep the money. After that, Zanis constructed a cross for his father-in-law, whom he had found murdered in the man's Aurora home 13 months earlier. So his most personal memorial went up in front of his father-in-law's former house and helped lift some of his depression. When asked about the cross at the time, he said he would deliver a cross to anybody, anytime, anywhere, free of charge. The “Crosses for Losses” ministry was born. “I really enjoy putting up the crosses,” he said. “It helps me grieve and remember my best friend.” The grieving process is what prompts Zanis to work hard at hand-sanding and repainting the crosses. He also wasn't deterred by the fact that NIU is a state-run school. But he also is experienced enough to know that most people are not offended but rather calmed by the memorials. “I know it's a secular college,” he said. “And I know that (public) schools are not supposed to have God in them. But what hope is there if these parents can't meet their children in heaven?” “I guess I still haven't cried for DeKalb yet,” Zanis said. “But I will. It'll catch up with me when all of this is gone, and it'll dawn on me what really happened over there.” Northwest Herald Reporter Danielle Guerra can be reached at dguerra@ nwherald.com.