Greg Gentry lost everything — his job, his home, his kids, his health insurance and then, after a grand mal seizure, his memory.
For about six months, the former commuter-airline employee lived on the streets of Denver, lost to friends and family.
Gentry, 43, has his life back on track. His daughters are living with him again, he has a place to live and he has plans for his own small business. Also, he reclaimed his religious life and has remarried.
“It’s been such a long journey,” said his mother, Velma Marshall, a minister in Texas and mother of seven, of whom Gentry is the youngest. “Some of it is so painful — to have your baby lost, literally, no one knowing where he is and not knowing whether he is dead or alive.”
On Aug. 7, he married Pearl Jackson, a woman he met at The Crossing, a transitional housing program they both had entered to try to piece their lives back together.
“Two years ago, I was a broken man,” he said. “I could not smile. I would cry so much. I just could not see . . . that my life would totally turn around.”
Gentry’s story is a typical tale of the spiral into homelessness and the rebound — how one loss leads to another and how a complex network of social services can help restore a life.
But the story stands out in the details of the single dad’s commitment to faith, personal growth and desire to make his family whole again.
It started in 1999, when Gentry separated from his wife and became the primary custodian of Tiffani, then 5, and Brittani, just 8 months old.
Juggling work and full-time care of his two young daughters was tough.
Day care didn’t open until 6:30 a.m., and he needed to be at his job at Denver International Airport by 6:15 a.m. By the time he dropped the girls off and got to the airport, he was an hour late.
For five years, the job allowed him to make up the lost hour at the end of the day, and Gentry’s make-it-work life hung together.
But a change in management came in 2004, and he was docked for being late and eventually fired.
Unable to pay the rent on his Aurora apartment, he was evicted. Without the health insurance provided by his job, he could not afford medication to control his epilepsy. The seizures began.
Then, because he had no home, his daughters were returned to their mother.
“That hurt, to lose my children,” he said. “When they left, that’s when the stress really hit. That weakened me even more than losing my job and my home.”
He got a room in a motel on Colfax Avenue and began to work as a day-laborer, earning $7.35 an hour.
He’d show up at temp agencies early in the morning to be first in line for work and wouldn’t get home until late in the evening. He rode the bus because he had sold his car.
There was no time to look for a better job, and deep depression sapped his remaining energy.
“I didn’t want to go outside,” he said. “I wouldn’t open the windows or curtains. I’d stay in the bed. I didn’t want to eat. I lost a lot of friends because I was so ashamed of myself.”
Three of Gentry’s brothers lived in the Denver area, but he shut even them out.
“Then came the biggest low,” he said. During a massive epileptic seizure, he fell, hit his head and suffered amnesia.
His mother and his brothers looked everywhere for Gentry, without luck. One day, his mother asked one of them to look for Gentry at Taylor Tools in Denver, where he had once worked.
“He didn’t think he was there, but to appease me, he went,” Marshall said.
Gentry, who was, in fact, working there, was called to the front desk.
“I walked up front, and there was my brother,” he said. “I literally jumped into his arms.”
“You got to get off your butt”
Slowly, he worked to rebuild his life, but the biggest step didn’t come until 2009, when he opened the door of his motel room to see his ex-wife standing there with Tiffani, then 15 years old.
“Tiffani’s mother had kicked her out and brought her to me,” said Gentry. “That gave me the drive. I said, ‘You got Tiffani now. You got to get off your butt and get something going.’ “
He began reaching out to the city’s network of social services.
The Stout Street Clinic of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless helped him with medical care. His health began to improve, with longer stretches between seizures.
He was accepted at The Crossing, a transitional housing facility operated by the Denver Rescue Mission. He and Tiffani moved in, and he joined its STAR program, featuring classes in life skills, budgeting, computers and relationship building.
Gentry was assigned a therapist and a lawyer, who helped him apply for long-term disability. Therapist Gene Ira Katz, who is in private practice and volunteers at the Denver Rescue Mission, still sees Gentry weekly.
“He’s like a different man from the person I first met,” Katz said.
Katz attended his client’s wedding, which saw Gentry’s two daughters serve as bridesmaids. Also, his mother — who drove here from Texas with his aunts — joined the pastor in conducting the ceremony.
“It’s a testament to him getting his life together,” Katz said. “He has both kids with him now and the strength to handle that.”
His bride had become homeless after an 18-year marriage ended in divorce.
“Neither one of us really wanted to get in a relationship,” Jackson said of the six-month friendship at The Crossing that preceded their engagement. “We wanted to wait till we got back on our feet. But then we realized we were blessed to find each other.”
For now, they are living at The Crossing, along with Brittani and Tiffani, and Tiffani’s 4-month-old daughter.
“We know the road ahead is bumpy,” Jackson said. “The greatest hurdle right now is finding a place to live. It will be hard for the girls to get used to the marriage, with me upstairs in one room, and their dad downstairs in another room.”
But for Gentry, it’s just one more obstacle that he plans to overcome, relying on his newfound faith.
“Now it’s nothing but smiles,” he said. “I just want to be an inspiration for other people who are feeling like I was, or worse. Just hang in there. Believe it’s going to get better.
“It may not happen the way we want it to, but just keep fighting. It’s going to get better. I’m a living witness.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
