Gregory James Martin

Gregory James Martin was born on June 12, 1946. He passed away at his home on Teel Street Lansing earlier this month. My family and I had the pleasure of knowing Greg over the last 16 years. During that time, we came to love Greg as a member of our clan. What started off as an unlikely friendship grew into Greg being a familiar face at our family gatherings and my two girls growing up knowing him simply as “Uncle Greg”. Greg was an avid reader of fiction and poetry, a fan of blues, jazz, and folk music. He was talented writer, musician, a cat lover. He loved the outdoors, as well as binge watching a good series, and was a lover of good food.

Greg was retired from the State of Michigan and Sparrow Health Systems when we first met. As a retiree he loved to sit at a café and read a good book or research the next project he wanted to tackle. Greg and I connected over brewing beer early on. Quickly our passion and ambition for brewing beer grew under Greg’s direction and experience. It wasn’t long before Greg and I were brewing ½ barrel batches of beer and my basement had turned into a micro-brewery. As a true do-it-yourselfer, Greg helped develop an electric brewing controller that increased our brewing capacity and streamlined the process to less than half the time. In those years, we would talk about opening a micro-brewery and farm together over a pints.

Greg loved good food. One of my first conversation with Greg was around food. I was the manager at the Starbucks in downtown East Lansing where Greg was a patron. I was about to take my lunch when I got to talking to Greg about the lack of Thai food options back then in the downtown area. He immediately said, “let’s go, I know what you need”. Next thing I knew, I was on the back of his scooter riding to Mai-Thai restaurant in Lansing. We had a great time, and the image of the store manager leaving to lunch on the back of a customer’s scooter, engrained in the memory of the baristas working that day.

Greg loved coming over to our farmstead. He loved my wife Jackie’s cooking and was always eager to contribute to the meal. We looked forward to making food together and having a good time. He won my girls over with pies and cakes that he “just had to get” or homemade ice cream he would bring over from time to time. We celebrated life together, often to the soundtrack of our Sunday, Funday playlist. He was a true supporter and an unsung hero of our family. He often brought a new cooking gadget along on his visits and would say that he had bought one for himself and had enjoyed it so much that he had to buy one for us too. In later years, he loved coming over to “supervise” the farm operations, mainly from the deck with a cat on his lap. He would be the first to hand me a beer at the end of the day’s work. He noticed the small things. In the first years of my career, money was tight, and he noticed the holes in our socks. That Christmas he got the entire family dozens of socks. He repeated this jester several more times in the years to come. Of course, in classic Greg style, he would choose the funkiest, brightest colored socks especially for me, a reminder not to take myself so seriously.

One day Greg asked me for the title for the last good book I read. I don’t quite remember the title I gave him, but he wasn’t impressed. Later that day I saw him again with a stack of books for me to read, and a flash drive with hundreds more. Over the years we came to bond over stories like Chris Stewart’s “Driving over Lemons” or Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”.

There is so much of Greg Martin that I only know through his amazing ability to tell a story. He was a larger-than-life figure in many ways. I know he was teacher of backgammon and creative writing at Lansing Community College with his long-time buddy Bill. He was a cyclist, sea kayaker, an amateur HAM radio licensee, and I just recently found out he ran a marathon as well. He cared about his neighbors (the late Dave and Terri Husted) and looked after the stray cats in his neighborhood. He had only kind words to say about his ex-wife, Sara, and reminded my wife and I to appreciate each other. In a world that seems to forget the importance of showing kindness to strangers, Greg’s life is a reminder that strangers have the capacity to be family, and that kindness given can be kindness received.

Greg, may your memory live on in hearts of those who loved and those you touched. Cheers my friend!

-A celebration of life will be held to honor the memory of Greg J. Martin on Sunday, July 16th, 2023, at Zumo Eco Farm in Williamston Michigan at 1pm. All who cared for him are invited.