Aurora Cross Maker Gets Helping Hand From Students

AURORA, IL — Greg Zanis has been crafting wooden crosses for victims of school shootings since the massacre at Columbine in 1999. And Zanis does it, mostly by himself, each time there's a school shooting. The Aurora native cuts wood, assembles the crosses, loads them up in his truck to take them across the country. Recently, though, he got a little help from students in Aurora, Chicago Tribune reports.

Before Zanis headed out to Las Vegas to deliver dozens of crosses to honor the victims of the last year's Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas, students at Christian Covenant School showed their love by decorating colorful hearts for Zanis to display on the crosses. Students brightened up the wooden hearts by adding pink, purple, red, and blue paint, along with heartfelt messages and quotes.

The students' involvement in Zanis's project speaks volumes for how much his cross-making mission has inspired the local community to show solidarity with survivors throughout the U.S. Recently, Zanis has been meeting with Chicago officials to help fight the tide of gun violence in the city, Chicago Tribune reports.

No matter where his work takes him, Zanis never hesitates when any of the survivors of a shooting reach out to him. In April, when Zanis displayed the original Columbine crosses at his home, he told Patch that he still gets phone calls from survivors and relatives of victims who reach out to check in.

It's this mutual love that Zanis brought with him when he hauled the 58 crosses — and their handmade hearts — to Las Vegas. He told Chicago Tribune it was overwhelming to see survivors of the Vegas shooting in wheelchairs and with permanent damage, to both their bodies and their psyches.

The hope is that in the midst of all that pain, someone will look at one of Zanis's crosses and find inspiration in their symbolism and words.

The hope is that the survivors won't forget the message of a Biblical Psalm glued on by a school kid. It read, "The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."

Image credit: Lisa Farver/Patch

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