Gregory’s personality and interests:
Gregory was a fun loving easy going very sociable young man. He loved the outdoors whether it was watching the sun rise from his favorite beach or walking a wooded trail he loved being outside. He loved animals especially his German Shepherd “Phionna”. He love to engage in conversation and even enjoyed a little debate, especially if it was topic he was passionate about. Gregory had many topics he was passionate about including the environment, climate change, gun ownership, plight of indigenous people. There weren’t many topics Gregory didn’t have an opinion on. Whomever he wound up debating he always parted friends with that person and that person was richer for it. We haven’t meet anyone that had a bad word to say about Gregory. Gregory was a people person he was so outgoing eager to meet new people who soon after he considered them a friend.
He was very interested in physical fitness he enjoyed playing football all through his youth, wrestling and boxing. He also attended the gym on a regular basis as he took staying fit very serious.
The impact of Gregory’s death:
We found the blue, lifeless body of our son Gregory in the family room of our home on the morning February 24,2021. We were in shocked utter disbelief. Our disbelief turned to complete shock and mind numbing grief and anger. Anger because we knew it was drugs that killed Gregory and it was such a senseless waste of a young life cut down in his prime. His death completely affected everything we did going forward. The grief made it almost impossible to function as we were walking around in a deep fog, at times it felt like life was in slow motion. Others times it seemed like it was just a bad dream and Gregory wasn’t really dead. However reality would come crashing back into our heads and hearts almost bringing to our knees as we would cry uncontrollably realizing he was in fact gone. There isn’t a day that goes that we don’t cry over his loss. It has been almost two years since we lost Gregory and sometimes it feels like it was yesterday, we miss his so bad that it hurts.
Once the fog started to clear we realized that we had take action and do something about finding out how and why Gregory died. We worked the local and state police all to no avail. We were told that despite the fact we knew where Gregory got the drugs that killed him there was nothing the police could do about it. It was explained to us by the state police that Massachusetts does not have a statute on the books that deals specifically with fentanyl poisoning deaths. We could believe it however we were determined to do something about that. We are determined to make something positive out of this senseless tragedy.
The Role of fentanyl in Gregory’s death:
Approximately three months after Gregory’s death we received the coroners report which revealed Gregory died from acute fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl which is fifty times stronger than heroin and one hundred times stronger than morphine. We were very surprised by this however it just emboldened our efforts to make changes in the existing laws. We sat down and began writing letters to our local legislators, district attorney, state police and the attorney general. We got a response from the attorney general that was basically a brush off saying they were sorry for our loss but there really wasn’t anything they could do to help us. The only other person that responded was State Senator Patrick O’Connor. Senator O’Connor was sympathetic to our situation and said he wanted to help. Senator O’Connor was in complete agreement with us with regards to lack of laws currently on the books with regards to fentanyl. He made a pledge to us that he would work to change this. He, along with his team solicited input from us, began to research what other states fentanyl laws were and began to write their own legislation for Massachusetts. He stayed in contact with us throughout the process and continually solicited our input. Currently twenty-five of the fifty states have laws that actively prosecute drug dealers. Senator O’Connor has just recently finished writing the legislation and has submitted the bill.
Working on the bill with Senator O’Connor and his team became a passion for us, a way to elicit some good out of Gregory’s death. The filing of the bill is just the beginning there are many steps the bill has to process through before becoming law. We will need as much public support as we can gather to get the bill passed. There will be opposition along the way from politicians with a more liberal progressive agenda who may argue that the bill is too punitive, or that it targets people who need treatment not incarceration. This bill is written so that it does not target those people, it is intended for higher level profit driven dealers who are killing our children. It has provisions in it to offer low level dealers treatment as an alternative to incarceration.
While in the process of assisting Senator O’Connor and his team we began to feel some satisfaction and hope that we might have an impact in this deadly attack on our society. As a result we began to think of other ways we could help make a positive change. What we came up this was the creation of a foundation in Gregory’s name to address fentanyl awareness. The foundation will provide outreach, education and treatment to individuals and families dealing with fentanyl poisonings as we’ll as other substance abuse disorders. In addition we will provide referral services for mental heath issues as well as rehabilitation. We hope to partner with law enforcement as part of our outreach as well as other similar organizations to ours. Eventually we would like to be in a position to offer financial assistance to families who suffered an unexpected loved ones death and are financially unprepared to handle it. Our board of directors as well as most staff will be comprised of Gregory’s friends and family members. We will be registered through the state and federal government as non-profit 501 C 3 charitable organization.
