Greg’s Story

My story begins on September 5, 1960 in New Rochelle, New York. The apartment in which my family was living, caught fire and our family, including my brothers Bobby and Larry, moved to New Jersey. I attended school there, but after being tested, they realized I had a reading problem.

They sent me to a school (PS 32) for ‘slow’ children in Hoboken. The principal allowed me to take supplies and notes to the teachers, becoming the ‘principal’s pet.’ This kept me safe in a ruff school. Today, I believe the principal was used as a guardian angel to protect me. I was taken into the shoe-shine business by a guy I had met named Carl. He taught me how to make a shoe-shine box and I eventually went out on my own after school.

I started high school, but after being mugged, I decided to quit. I continued to shine shoes because my parents did not have any money to buy us food. My father was a bingo gambler and drank-up the rest of his paycheck. My mother died when I was only 17 from alcohol stuff. Eventually, I was sent to a foster home; unfortunately, I began stealing money from my foster parents, the Huberts, and was sent to a reform school in Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

I was there for almost 18 months before being released. I hooked up with some bad people and I was implicated in a mugging; because I had a pocket-knife in my possession, the judge sent me to Rikers Island Correctional Center in New York until a court date was scheduled. While waiting, there was an incident in which another prisoner put a broken Christmas ornament up to my eye and said, “Mighty whitey, I want your shoes.” I was very scared. Finally, they released me and I was returned to the reform school.

At the Sandy Hook reform School, some ministers came each Sunday to sing songs and give a gospel message. One Sunday, as I was walking around near the school, I decided to enter their church building. I continued to attend church services there and on April 22, 1980 at 5:30 in the evening I gave my life to the Lord and I was baptized in sea-salted water.

These people sent me to Vineland, New Jersey where I entered a detox center and met Anna and Bucky who also came to sing gospel songs. They ran a Boarding House in Philadelphia for men who had completed the program and I went to live with them. Because I was still having addiction issues, John, a friend of theirs, drove me to the Salvation Army. This was a homeless shelter for drug addicts and I began attending AA Meetings. My job, while living there, was to pick-up donations from homes and the many drop-off boxes they had located around the City of Brotherly Love.

I also learned how to do various jobs within their rehabilitation center. Bucky and Anna visited me weekly with a friend, John Kelly, who told me about a family in New York. After almost a year at the Salvation Army, they contacted Tom and Kathy Murphy who had moved their House Church from Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia to South Hartwick, New York. John and Joan Kelly, House Leaders in Philadelphia, bought me a one-way ticket on a Greyhound bus to Oneonta, New York.

The LORD began to help me in this new part of my life as a believer in Jesus, our Messiah. I began washing dishes at the old Pepper Mill restaurant in Cooperstown, and after a year I began work at the Tunnicliff Inn, also washing dishes for another six months. At that time, Tom Murphy was a Job Coach for ARC Otsego and taught me the job as a pot scrubber /dishwasher at Bassett Hospital in November of 1989. After eight years in dietary, I applied for a position in Housekeeping.

I have been working at Bassett for over thirty-one years. In 1998, Tom and Kathy were blessed to purchase a tract of land from a neighbor’s estate, Mrs. Weeks, who had lived in South Hartwick for over 85 years. This land had a thousand feet of track bed from the old trolley line, which ran from Oneonta, New York to its hub in Hartwick and then on to Cherry Valley.

In April of 2002, Tom asked me if I would help him clear the rail-line of all the trees which had grown up over the many years it had been abandoned. Tom was unable to continue to help me because of his teaching responsibilities and it was left to me to complete the task. It took me over three years to finish the job and I was able to begin a wood selling business as I cut down the many trees which blocked the path.

It was a hard and sweaty job, especially taking out the roots of many large trees and the thick wild grape vines that blocked my way. This made it very difficult because of their thickness. I stuck to the job and completed it in April of 2005. During the next 14 years, we continued to grade and widen the path. In 2019 Tom, Kathy, and I decided that we would open it up to the community as “Greg’s Prayer Path.” The walk uses the scriptural theme regarding our path in following the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We hope you enjoy its beauty through all the seasons God gives us across the year