Letters from Friends and Family
Memory from Jenny
One of the greatest things about Greg was his love of variety.
He was an Engineer turned English major who still worked with AutoCAD, a
sports loving musician who loved adventures, a quiet leader who led
by example, a goofy, fun-loving gambler who was known to rock out to music in
the back of a car while discussing everything from movies, to family to life and
love and the state of the world. Everyone who met Greg loved him and I think
that was, at least in part, due to the fact he was interested in so many
different things that he
always could find common ground with the people around him.
I love Greg with all of my heart. I know that I will always carry a part of him
with me because without him, I wouldn't be me. But I don't want to forget I
don't want to forget anything about him his laugh, the sound of his voice, his
beautiful green/blue/brown eyes that were always changing color. I don't want to
forget a
single moment we shared together. I don't want to forget all the ways he
impacted my life so dramatically. So, here is my attempt at beginning to write
some of these memories down.
One of his most excited moments...
Greg loved math, numbers, probabilities and all things challenging. Whenever
driving he would add up the numbers on the license plates of cars around him to
determine which were divisible by 9. He also had
the amazing ability to multiply two double digit numbers in his head. His love
of stats even came into play during NCAA tournament time when he would keep
track of everyone's brackets with a very complex, mathematical system he came up
with that involved giving people more points for choosing underdog teams to win
than it did
picking the obvious choices. I believe it was Greg's love of numbers that
inspired him to become a bit of a poker fanatic.
I have so many amazing memories of us playing poker together
Greg loved playing poker with his family, with the Kraft interns, for pennies
with his trombone friends, on partypoker.com, and he loved the challenge of
playing poker in Vegas. I can recall several times all of us sitting around the
Vasich dining room table playing poker. Greg would get a sly smile on his face
and say "Nothing's wild except the dealer" (something, I believe, he
learned from his Grandpa) as he would deal cards around the table single handed
using only his thumb to push the cards off of the top of the deck.
But, I think perhaps my greatest poker memory comes from the poker tournament
Greg and I played in last winter. For a very long time Greg was trying to
convince me to go play poker with him and his poker buddies down in Champaign.
After much convincing, I finally agreed to play in a tournament with him. I was
pretty nervous since
I had only played with friends for fun before and I knew these people took their
poker very seriously, but Greg kept reassuring me that I was honestly a really
good player and that I had good instincts and he was sure I could handle it and
would do really well. When the tournament started, there were 78 people and Greg
and I were not sitting at the same table. I was nervous. During the first break
I remember Greg coming up to me so excited, loving
every minute of this experience. He had the amazing ability to recall nearly all
of the hands that had gone around his table and what his reaction to the hands
had been. I had been doing pretty well in the tournament and when Greg saw how
many chips I had in front of me he looked so happy for me and so proud of me. I
realize
that this sounds a bit silly when we are talking about poker, but Greg always
made me feel so special no matter what we were doing. Anyways, the
tournament went on and eventually, out of the 78 people
starting in the tournament Greg and I both ended up in the top the final table.
Pretty unbelievable. I ended up being the 8th person out, but Greg was still
going. By this time probably about 6 or 7 hours of hard core poker playing had
passed, but Greg was still extremely focused on what he was doing. Eventually
Greg was down to the final two. Greg had only about 1/3 of the chips on the
table and the other guy had 2/3 of the chips. Even so, Greg remained determined.
He got some lucky hands, made some smart moves, went all-in several times and
eventually his opponents chip pile started dwindling while the number of chips
in front of Greg kept growing. It was only a matter of time before Greg won the
whole thing. I was so excited for him, and I remember being able to see the
thrill in Greg's eyes. However, because the person who had just lost was sitting
right next to him, Greg kept his excitement limited to the huge grin planted on
his face. But, the very second we walked out the door of this house, Greg let
out a huge scream, picked me up, twirled me around and proceeded to run, jump
and spin all the way to the car. As soon as we pulled away Greg grabbed his cell
phone and called his parents to share the news with them. I think this was one
of the most excited moments I ever shared with Greg. And I don't think it was
the money that excited Greg (which amounted to over $900). It was the thrill of
the game and the excitement of an adventure.