I TAUGHT NICK IN THE LATE 90's.
HE WAS A GOOD, HARD WORKER.
LATER, HIS MOM MARRIED
KENNY DEMARCO...WHO LIVED
UP THE STREET FROM THE SHOP,
AND WAS REID'S AGE.
I WENT TO HIS FUNERAL IN JUNE.
I WENT TO HIS FUNERAL IN JUNE.
With thousands of crucial, yet everyday people comprising the Utah Valley community, the Daily Herald would like to further highlight and share the real stories and impact of those who have recently departed. "A bit more of the story" will reflect those efforts and remember those lives.
Nick Gentry’s story isn’t an easy one to tell, as it’s filled with too many “what could’ve beens.”
Gentry died in June, at the age of 31, from a heroin overdose. Though he often told his sister, Andrea Stewart, he'd end up dying from his addiction, he still clung to life.
“He always wanted to live,” said Ann De Marco, his mother.
She and Stewart both can recall many, many other times he’d come so close to death. De Marco recalled him telling her that often during his highs he’d have a vision where he was given the choice to live or to be released from his mortal experience — and he always chose to live, so he wouldn’t hurt her.
This last time, De Marco and Stewart still can’t understand why he didn't wake up.
“Nick hated his addiction, he hated the disease of his addiction," De Marco said. "We put him in rehab, in detoxes, over the years, but with heroin, you’re very lucky if they work.
"He’d tell me sometimes that he wished he had cancer because at least some types are treatable.”
One party, just a few blocks away. That is where his addiction began. He went to a friend’s party in his Alpine neighborhood one night when he was about 16. He and a friend were approached by some older boys offering them a “shot.” Gentry and his friend declined.
“I knew where he was. I knew the parents. I didn’t think anything like this was going on,” De Marco said. “But there was beer involved, and as time wore on, as it got later in the night, Nick’s ‘no’ started breaking down.
"He and his friend let the guy give them a shot. They were addicted. They were had.”
De Marco did not find out immediately about the drugs. Gentry was into it for a while before a family friend alerted her — only because, as a 20-years-sober cocaine addict, the friend knew the signs.
“Nick was always a functioning addict," De Marco said. "He’d be able to work and hold down jobs, but he still had a problem."
One of the worst parts of addiction is how it overshadows the true person behind the drugs. And by all accounts, Gentry was a wonderful son and brother, with a horrible problem.
Gentry is remembered for his tender heart. He was only 4 when his father abandoned the family. Though he struggled with anger issues related to that for the rest of his life, at that young age, his worry was for his mother. De Marco remembers crying on the floor some time during the divorce, and her small son approaching her.
“He asked me if he could give me a blessing to help me feel better. I remember his little hands,” De Marco said.
She also remembers, albeit with a bit of guilt, when he came home with a beautiful batch of tulips to give her for Mother’s Day — all picked from neighbors’ yards. He was the one, as he grew, who went out and secretly shoveled a neighbor’s driveway — a neighbor that no one else in the area got along with.
His tenderness came out as well when De Marco and Gentry went on an Alaskan black bear hunting trip while he was in his early teens. Gentry went out the first night with a father-and-son group. The group winged a female bear, and her cries tore at Gentry’s heart.
“He came back from that and told me, ‘I am not shooting anything.’ He said he’d take pictures of them, but he wasn’t going to kill a bear,” De Marco said.
To Stewart, Gentry was her best friend. On the outside he was tough, she said, but deep down he was "super sensitive." When Stewart was going through a divorce a few years ago, Gentry was the one she turned to for support, even though she's five years older. He was the one who helped her through a very tough situation.
"He was just so stinkin' funny," she said, recalling a funny memory. "We had so much fun together."
Gentry was a very hard worker. While he was in high school, he worked for a man in Alpine as a house cleaner, landscaper and general maintenance worker. He saved almost everything he made for a few years, and by the time he was 21, he walked into a Dodge dealership with a $20,000 cash down payment in his pocket.
He loved cars, trucks and Jeeps of all sorts, and was always taking apart, fixing or building a new one. De Marco laughed at the fix-it shop that was her garage was for many years.
At one time, when Gentry was a teen, he and his older brother, Judd, both had their eye on a Sand Rail off-roader their local doctor neighbor was selling. Gentry was the one, though, who got out of bed at 6 a.m. one morning and woke up the doctor, just so he could beat his brother to buying it. Gentry put a new engine in it, and drove that little dune buggy all over.
As an adult, he still enjoyed his toys, and used them as a career. He was a heavy equipment operator with a knack for running backhoes and the like.
“He just had a feel for it," De Marco said, smiling. "He loved doing it. It’s what he always wanted to do — play with big Tonka trucks."
He kept fit, and his tall, muscular frame always filled the room. His mother recalled that even though he had a decent head of hair, his head was always adorned with a backward ball cap or his favorite green bandanna.
Just a year ago, life seemed to be on an upswing for him, as he had recently had a son, Levi. He adored the boy, sacrificing to be with him, and to care for him properly. He wrote in his diary last Christmas that, as a father, he felt the happiest he’d felt in his whole life.
Still, all those fun memories are overshadowed by the ever-present cage of addiction. All De Marco and Stewart have left now are gaping holes in their lives and pictures of Gentry.
Even then, his mother can tell when she looks at those pictures when he was on or off the drugs. In his teens and early 20s, he was able to function and “control” the drugs. But by about age 25, the drugs had engulfed him, and at one point, he realized he was one of the last hard-core drug addicts of his group left. The rest had already died.
Still, De Marco hangs on, even when it’s been hard to get out of bed — to face her life without her son. And she clings to his love for her to help her heal.
“Every day of this boy’s life, he’d call me and tell me that he loved me. Every day, no matter where he was," De Marco said through tears. "Even the day he died, I remember that morning, before he left for an appointment, he yelled up the stairs to me five times, saying, 'I love you.’
“He loved his mother.”
Stewart said when Gentry told her he'd die of his addiction, he asked her to make sure people knew, to make sure people understood what it took from him.
"I wish he could have seen himself through other's eyes. He was so good and so loved by so many. And he was the only one in the world who couldn't see it," Stewart said.
"Drugs are so strong, they just take over everything."
