I wish I had known him, he sounds like the kind of man you'd be proud to have him call you friend. P
I'll try to put a little light on Greg for those who never had the honor and pleasure of knowing him, but before I begin, I ask that other who knew him would chime in and add and/or correct anything I write here. Time does funny things to memory, and it doesn't help that there were times Greg and I were talking that we both were sampling processed grains.
Greg was born in 1947 to a Merchant Marine who had been awarded the Legion of Merit for his actions as a Lt. Cmdr. in the U.S. Navy. Keep in mind that, as of this date, there have only been 248 Legion of Merits awarded since the founding of this nation. In order to be awarded the LOM, one has to have acted in such a way as to have had a material impact on the outcome of a war. Not a firefight, skirmish, or even a battle, but a war. That's the kind of household he was brought up in.
Greg's Dad became a Merchant Marine after being discharged from the Navy after the war, Captaining freighters all over the Pacific. Greg grew up on a ship.
When Greg turned 17, he enlisted in the Marines and served four years including a tour in Viet Nam, which I only knew him once to speak about and that seemed to bring back some real stress, so it was not pursued.
Once out of the Marines, he headed north to Alberta, Canada and became a cowboy. There, he was in place for the beginnings of the oil exploration boom and went to work in the oil fields. Greg started out as a Floorhand and there, he learned to weld and to do machine work from some real savvy old men., soon becoming a rig mechanic. Greg did well enough that he eventually became a Toolpusher, working for a number of Wildcatters.
Greg also became a blaster or "powder monkey", skilled enough that he was contracted to do that cabin explosion for the movie "Death Hunt".
Greg left the oil fields for a while, buying and running a small gas station. I am guessing that wasn't enough for Greg as he took a job offer that would forever change his life and outlook on life.
This was during the time when Mexico was experiencing a huge growth in oil production and other Central American countries were also trying to get in to the game.
Greg was approached by a small group of Wildcatters who contracted him to go to Central America and set up Wildcat rigs and train the locals how to set them up and successfully run them. Greg traveled all over Central America for the next six years, selecting, hiring and training locals to do just that. Keep in mind that Greg spoke damned near no Spanish when he first started that job!
Some of the photos Greg showed me of the rigs and their locations down there are just amazing. Talk about some difficult terrain!
Greg fell in love with the culture and people of Central America, but remained fiercely loyal to America, so he settled for the best of both worlds, living roughly six miles from the Mexican Border.
Greg applied his machine and welding skills, running a shop from the place he built out of nothing SE of Sierra Vista, AZ. He also became a board member of the Sierra Vista Shooting Range where he traveled to Phoenix to lobby (successfully) the Dept of Game and Fish for grant funding for that public facility.
Greg, being a Marine (rifleman first!), got into the BPCR world by way of doing some custom work on a couple of old Sharps rifles for customers of his. As one would expect, he was as meticulous about the BPCR world as he was everything else in his life. Not getting rich at his small machine shop, he learned to create accurate rifles from genuine old Sharps and Remington Roling Block rifles. He also learned to restore Schuetzen rifles and their accessories.
He drew the admiration and appreciation of the top BPCR shooters in the country for not only his rifle building skills, but his shooting and spotting skills. He ws spotting for Lee Shavers the day that Lee became the first BPCR competitor to clean all of the chickens at a registered match. This has only been done twice in the history of BPCR competition.
For a time, Greg also wrote a column in the "Single Shot Exchange" on the subjects of BPCR and Schuetzen rifles.
Greg competed with is own creation, a "Badgersoli", an 1874 Sharps clone made of an early Pedersoli action and a Badger barrel, with accurizing of the action and making a new stock. The last time I was at Greg's, he showed me a Badgersoli that he was building for a customer that was a thing of beauty, with AAA exhibition wood, deeply engraved action, and that was headed to have the action case-hardened by Doug Turnbull.
Not content with just wood and steel, Greg created a small oasis out of his acreage SW of Sierra Vista, planting fruit trees and growing a spineless Blackberry cultivar that was amazing in it's productivity and the size and flavor of it's fruit. He also cultivated a vegetable garden, using minimal water techniques and raised meat rabbits for food and for their manure, which was his favorite garden fertilizer.
Greg, ever interested in the environment he lived in, became very active in water issues, using his knowledge of state government, he lobbied the Department of Agriculture to preserve the aquifers in AZ for the use of AZ residents and not sell the water to the State of California.
Greg was no angel, by any stretch of the imagination, but he was an honest, straightforward man who gave his word and kept it, expecting others to do the same.
Most folks have no idea how much pain Greg lived with every day. His knees and his hips were bone-on-bone, but he was too proud and self-reliant to ask for help. Some faulted him for his drinking, but that was his way of continuing to function. Right or wrong, that's the reason.
He was gruff, abrupt, short-tempered, and had little patience for stupidity (expressed or implied), was quick to judge, but could, and did, change his mind when given all the facts, he was extremely loyal, generous, and considerate.
He lived that life expressed by Theodore Roosevelt; "For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected will never know."
He was a sort of a Renaissance Man as he was an artist in wood and steel, he was a great machinist and welder, he could design and build almost anything he could imagine, he was very well read, multi-lingual, (speaking both smokeless and black powder), and was an animal lover.
He truly was a Western Character, full of life and energy, fixed in his code of honor and beliefs, a good man to have with you in a tight spot, fearless and confident, and one of the finest men I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. To be considered a friend of his was an honor.
As noted by other good folks here, we are diminished.
Rest in Peace, my friend, I'll see you on the other side.
Ed
