Greg Fortezzo

This photo is the Greg I remember snapped at an annual Thanksgiving camp out at Big Sur. What is shocking of Greg's death is that he was a contemporary. He was a kind of rising star in our little store front outreach in Huntington Beach. I was in college and he was a machinist. I remember him preaching a Bible Study for the first time in John 6 at our little downtown outpost. It wasn't sensational, rather repetitive (he kept saying something to the effect that if try to fill your life with somthing with Jesus, you are settling for a stale loaf) but we all wanted to serve the Lord and was learning our chops in those days. It is an odd feeling to remember those idealistic years of wanting to see what God was going to do in our uncertain world through us. Now we look back on the other side of life with experience and hard lessons learned. And it hits home when one with whom we started out has reached the end. We were also in a little singing group for a while where he at his own expense bought an electronic organ (a big thing in that pre-computer age). It was called Dayspring with he, myself (guitar), Elaine (recorder), Joie (voice) and Mike (voice). We tried to sing scripture to music and sang a few tent meetings and perhaps a wedding. Greg got sent off to plant a church up north. He started Accurate paint to make a living and choose the name so it would show up at the beginning of the phone book. Apparently he did well with it. I wouldn't say we were buddies in subsequent years as, as it goes, we took very divergent paths. But looking back, all my memories of him were good ones.