Jersey Shore Photographer Is A Portrait Of Redemption

TOMS RIVER, NJ -- Gregory Andrus Jr. sits in the booth at the Crystal Diner and pauses for a moment, a pensive look on his face.

"I was totally caught off-guard," said Andrus, the man behind the Portraits of the Jersey Shore, a Facebook community of more than 12,000 followers. Through his page, Andrus tells the stories of everyday people, men and women who live and work at the Jersey Shore. They are business owners and homeless people; they volunteer with nonprofits and they are teachers.

"Everyone has a story," Andrus said.

But it was the story he shared on Portraits of the Jersey Shore of a homeless family of 10 -- and the outpouring of support it prompted -- that made him feel there was a bigger purpose behind what he does: that he could be a resource for those in need.

"The response to their story was overwhelming," Andrus said. "I thought there were services in place to help people." What he came to realize is that while there are services in place, there is a need to help connect those in need to those services. It is his project for the New Year.

"Every person I meet has an intrinsic value," Andrus said. It's something he understands that because it is a lesson he had to learn about himself. It took nearly losing his life to learn it.

A wake-up call

Andrus, 47, says his life changed forever on May 31, 1998. He was living in New Brunswick at the time, playing in a punk band and living in a boarding house.

Andrus had had a difficult life. In school in Edison, he was bullied, physically and emotionally. Home was an abusive environment.

"I had no safe place," he said. By the age of 15, he was an alcoholic, and at the age of 18 he was living on the streets after being chased from his home. He stayed with friends, sleeping on their couches, partying all night, and generally just living day-to-day, battling the demons that come with years of feeling worthless.

But in the early hours of May 31, 1998, Andrus was at a friend's party he heard a commotion outside. A car had crashed, and he went outside to investigate.

"This big guy goes running by me," Andrus said, and there was a police officer giving chase. The officer fired at the man, but it was Andrus who was hit in the head. A newspaper account of the incident said Andrus was shot behind the left ear. He remembers pounding on someone's door yelling for them to call 911 because someone had been shot. He woke up in the hospital.

"That's when I found my sense of faith," Andrus said. Until then, "all I knew was violence." But in surviving a gunshot to the head, Andrus said, he felt there must be a higher purpose for his life. He started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings -- "I found a really good community there," Andrus said -- and took a job working as a clerk in a bookstore, which is where he met his wife, Mary. The couple, who have two sons, moved to Toms River in 2005, because the Jersey Shore has long held a special place in his heart.

"It's unlike any other area," Andrus said.

He credits the spirituality he found as a result of being shot with helping him make peace with his father and with helping him find his purpose.

"Faith is what helped me stay straight," he said.

Powerful stories, powerful images

Portraits of the Jersey Shore blossomed from what started as a hobby. Andrus said he was taking photos with his iPhone -- landscapes and portraits -- and shared the photos with friends. They encouraged him to do more with them.

"They suggested I do something like 'Humans of New York,' " a project that is a series of interviews with all kinds of people in New York. So Andrus took the idea and ran with it. The first time he approached someone, he was very nervous, he said. But over time, the stories became easier.

Since he started doing the project in August 2015, he's done hundreds of interviews and posted them on the Facebook page.

"I try to post a story a day," Andrus said, which he accomplishes by doing his interviews on the weekends. The iPhone has given way to a Nikon 3200, which was a gift from friends. He receives some sponsorship from the Southern Ocean Chamber of Commerce in exchange for doing some projects for them, and from the Teachers' Lounge, which supports his series of profiles on teachers. But most of his work is his own time, and his main focus and goal have remained the same.

"I have an opportunity to let people speak for themselves and blow up stereotypes," Andrus said. His second interview was with a Muslim imam. It was eye-opening. "He told me how he was trying to raise his sons to be part of the community, just a normal kid growing up," enrolling them in Boy Scouts and other youth activities in the community.

Andrus continues to try to break down the stereotypes with the people he profiles. He identifies especially with those battling addiction or who are homeless.

"I've been homeless," Andrus said. "I have battled depression and addiction. I understand what it's like."

That's why his project is morphing come January, into one where he is a resource for those in need.

"I have a responsibility now," he said, because of the number of followers the page has achieved. That sense of responsibility is driving him to start a website. He plans to blog at least once a week and have the website be a central listing of resources for those in need, from those fighting drug addiction to teens who find themselves out on the street to families in crisis.

Families like Rob and Marlene and their eight children, who he met the weekend before Thanksgiving. The company Rob worked for had shut down, leaving them without the income that paid their rent. Marlene was working, but her income wasn't sufficient to meet their needs. When Andrus met them, they had been evicted three days earlier and their landlord had gotten rid of many of their belongings.

Within days of Andrus's post on Portraits of the Jersey Shore, Rob had leads on three jobs, clothing and toys had been donated for the children and enough funds had been donated to get the family into temporary shelter through the Christmas holidays, giving Rob a chance to focus on getting his feet back underneath him.

"How the community rallied to help was Dickensian," Andrus said. And it blew him away. Many of those who responded suggested sources of help for the family, from food pantries to churches to support groups. Andrus wants to have them all at his fingertips in the future, to help more people in times of need, so no one is left stranded.

"This is a mission, and it is my passion," he said. "I've found my purpose."

"In the end, we all have stories," Andrus says on the Facebook page. "We all have experiences, and each one of us carries a voice of inspiration for others to be moved by."

Gregory Andrus Jr., on the steps of the Crystal Diner. Photo by Karen Wall