Hopefully this works- from a post by Tom Jensen
I know this might be the last thing you would expect from me but I’m going to write a tribute to a nutty right wing homophobic misogynistic street preacher.
When I came to UNC in 2002 we were in the heat of Elizabeth Dole’s run for the US Senate here. You would think that Preacher Gary, our resident ‘Pit Preacher,’ would have been excited about the possibility of a new Republican Senator. But he was mad. Specifically at Bob Dole. He opined in his unmistakeable cadence that Bob needed to slap Liddy on the behind and say ‘get in the kitchen baby, make me some cookies!’
It was appalling. But especially as an 18 year old fresh from the Midwest it was riveting. You never knew what Gary was going to say next. In a pre smartphone era it was the best entertainment you could find during the day on campus.
I argued with Gary the first couple years I was a student about all the awful stuff he would say. But I sort of got a new perspective on him when a couple of friends and I went to the ‘Ham and Yam Festival’ in Smithfield at the end of my sophomore year. When he saw us his face just lit up and he was so excited to see his ‘friends’ from Chapel Hill in an unusual place.
At that point I realized that yes Gary said horrible stuff. But I think at the core of his preaching was a loneliness and lack of feeling of connection that he tried to fill by connecting with students on campuses across the state…even if that connection was just them yelling back at him.
I always felt that Gary was more absurd than mean. My last couple of years of college I didn’t argue with him anymore and just sat and listened to the Gary Show. A few times he even asked me to go to K&W with him when he was done preaching for the day but I didn’t think getting on Gary’s motorcycle was the best idea in the world
After I graduated and started going to Raleigh every day I saw Gary sparingly for the next 15 years. But after I switched to working from home during the pandemic, I started walking through campus in the middle of the day pretty regularly and seeing Gary again. We never had a big chat about it or anything but he still recognized me and his face would light up whenever he saw me there.
And in those last few years something very funny started to happen. When Gary would say something really crazy, he would catch my eye and wink at me. I could be wrong. But I took that as Gary’s way of saying ‘we’ve been together more than 20 years. You know I don’t actually think all this crazy stuff I say.’
I noticed I never saw Gary this year and now comes the word from the DTH that he passed this winter. I’m not going to say Gary was a good person or a bad person. He was a complicated person. But what I can say without hesitation is he made life more interesting. And I appreciate anyone who’s such a singular personality that they break up the tedium of every day life. I will miss that crazy old man.
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