Greg Zanis, who has been making white wooden crosses seen after mass shootings and other tragedies, has decided to retire from the self-appointed volunteer position after a year that saw multiple shootings, NBC News reports.
"I just feel like it was a calling only I could have filled," Zanis, 69, told NBC. "This is all they have left," he said in an interview earlier this year, "and I know that and I know it means the world to them."
His website, Zanis Crosses for Losses, accepts requests for crosses as well as donations since he doesn't charge the family members of victims. He builds wooden crosses, stars of David or crescent moons with victims' names painted on them, then drives them to the scene of the tragedy and sets them up. It's a project he started after discovering his own father-in-law murdered in 1996.
His first set of crosses were brought to the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado, and he has since been to the Parkland, Florida school shooting, and the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Zanis estimates he's made 27,000 crosses over the years.
Recent years have taken a toll on him with the rash of mass shootings, Zanis said. And early this year a gunman killed five people in a warehouse in his hometown of Aurora, Illinois — the shortest distance he's ever had to drive to deliver crosses.
"I saw it as something that makes a difference," Zanis said of his mission, "and touches families, the city, state and nation."
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.