'He was an old stoner with a million stories': Remembering Ian victim Gregg Strasser

To our readers: As our community continues to recover from the devastating blow of Hurricane Ian, The News-Press and Naples Daily News are telling the stories of those who died in the storm or its aftermath.

The first thing most people remember about Gregg Strasser is that glorious facial hair.

Sometimes Strasser kept it short and trimmed, a horseshoe-shaped mustache like wrestler Hulk Hogan. But usually he wore it long, gray and unkempt: A Fu Manchu-style mustache and goatee that people couldn’t help but notice right away.

“Oh my God, it went down past his chin!” says friend Sheila Annazone of Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. “It went way down.”

Of course, there was so much more to Strasser than just his facial hair. His friends and family call him “an old hippie” who loved music, books, motorcycles and long, long conversations ― conversations he often initiated with the words, “Hey, dude…”

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Gregory Harold Strasser ― who died Sept. 28 during Hurricane Ian ― loved to talk so much, in fact, he sometimes annoyed his co-workers at Mother Earth Natural Foods, the North Fort Myers store he managed until the health-food chain abruptly closed all its stores in summer 2022 and left him jobless.

“Some of the girls that worked there felt like he didn’t do anything but tell stories,” says friend Shari Shifrin of Fort Myers.

But those conversations ― what amazing conversations!

Shifrin remembers talking to Strasser about concerts, books, blues-guitar riffs, New York deli food, motorcycles, the people he used to meet at his New Jersey motorcycle shop and so much more.

“I think our relationship was mostly conversations,” Shifrin says. “We’d talk about anything. I’m a big talker, but it was mostly Gregg doing the talking. He always had a story to tell.”

Gregg Strasser's death during Hurricane Ian

Strasser, 71, was one of 150 Florida people whose deaths have been linked to Hurricane Ian. Neighbors found him dead inside his Fort Myers house in front of his recliner, as if he’d gotten up from the chair and then fallen down onto the soggy carpet, sister Janet Link of Montclair, New Jersey, said last year.

Strasser, who lived alone, had been released from the emergency room after a fall just a day before the storm hit, Link said. And not long before that, he’d spent nearly two months at a hospital and rehabilitation facility.

A medical examiner's report said Strasser’s death stemmed from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease. He’d been a heavy smoker for years, Link says.

The vast majority of people who died during Ian — nearly two-thirds — were people 65 years and older, according to a USA TODAY Network-Florida analysis of state fatality data. Drowning was a factor in about a third of those deaths, while the rest stemmed largely from injuries, preexisting medical conditions and overexertion.

Link ― worried about Strasser’s declining health ― says she'd tried to convince her brother to evacuate to a shelter. But he decided to stay at home.

"At that point, the storm was already starting, and I think he was afraid to do it," Link said. "It wasn't like he was being macho, but he said, 'I think I'll be OK.'

"I don't think anybody quite realized how violent the storm was going to be.”

Remembering 'The Colonel'

Strasser had lived in Fort Myers since 1991, when he moved there from Wayne, New Jersey, according to his obituary. He was born in New York City and grew up in Wayne.

He’d worked several jobs over the years: Owner of Legend Cycle motorcycle shop in Wayne, a salesman of maternity dresses in New York City’s garment district, a massage therapist in Fort Myers and ― most recently ― manager of Mother Earth Natural Foods in North Fort Myers.

His sister doesn’t remember why, exactly, he moved to Fort Myers after selling his Triumph motorcycle shop. He’d been to Florida to attend motorcycle mechanic school, and she thinks that’s when he fell in love with the state.

“He liked the beach, he liked the weather, he liked the relaxed atmosphere,” Link says. “He worked in Manhattan for a number of years. It’s a high-energy, high stress kind of place.”

Strasser met many of his friends through Mother Earth. Link says he worked there for about 15 years before getting laid off along with the rest of the Southwest Florida stores' employees in about May 2022.

Co-workers called him The Colonel, she says. She’s not sure why, other than he was in charge (and perhaps the Civil War-style facial hair helped, too).

That’s where Shifrin met Strasser. She was looking for something to help her mother with COPD, and Strasser was more than happy to offer potential remedies.

“He took a very personal interest in my mom’s health situation,” Shifrin says. “I was constantly picking up potions and he was calling with ideas. It was really supportive during a very hard time I was going through with my mother.

“He had all sorts of ideas: ‘’Take this and it’ll open your lungs’ and ‘Take this, it’ll thin your mucous secretions.’”

From there, a friendship bloomed. As did many other friendships with people that the easygoing, endlessly chatty Strasser met at Mother Earth and elsewhere.

“I think Gregg’s existence can be described as casual, in general,” Shifrin says. “He never met a stranger. He didn’t have any problems sharing music and ideas. It was kind of a spiritual approach to living.”

An old hippie who loved music, books and conversation

Friends describe Strasser as someone who thrived in the ‘60s and never left behind that hippie outlook.

“He was the epitome of the ‘60s, all the way to his dying breath, I’m sure,” Annazone says. “He was an old stoner with a million stories ― and on slow days I would hear them all.”

He loved drinking Miller Lites and smoking marijuana, friends say. He wore round, John Lennon-style glasses. And Shifrin remembers making him T-shirts once that said things like, “Tree-hugging, pot-smoking vegetarian.”

“He was a soulful person who existed in a time that got past him,” Shifrin says. “His ideology was a very ‘60s ideology.

“He was an old hippie. (He had the) ideals of all for one, one for all; one love … I think he lived that all the way to the end.”

Strasser also loved to read. His sister estimates he had about a thousand paperback novels in his Fort Myers home, a converted brick firehouse with an entire wall of bookshelves packed with mysteries, science fiction, Carl Hiaasen, Pat Conroy and more.

“He was very well read,” Link says. “But it was more like science fiction, things like that. He wasn’t reading 'War and Peace' and that kind of thing. …

“He could sit and read a book all day. He loved to read.”

Link says her brother was “very intelligent” with a steel-trap memory. He could quote entire passages from books and had an IQ of 140. “I know this because my parents had him tested,” she says. “He was always thinking.”

He also adored music and often played guitar at home for friends or wherever he went. He even used to jam occasionally onstage at Buckingham Blues Bar, Shifrin says.

“He just jammed with whoever wanted to jam,” she says. “At one point, he had this really old pickup truck that he always had his guitar in. And if he showed up somewhere and there were people playing, he’d go grab his guitar out of the truck.”

Strasser's favorite music was blues, folk, Jimmy Buffett and especially classic rock ‘n’ roll acts like Spirit.

“He was a rocker,” Shifrin says. “That was his passion.”

On top of that, Strasser enjoyed riding his motorcycle around Southwest Florida, partying with friends, following the stock market and talking politics (friends describe him as a “very liberal” man who adored comedian George Carlin).

He also appreciated a good dirty joke, Shifrin says and laughs. “Oh my God, he would tell these jokes where you’d have to look both ways to see who else heard it.”

Friends and family says they’ll miss all those things about Strasser and so much more.

“He was a really, really mellow, good guy,” Annazone says. “I never heard him say a bad word against anybody ― except the government.”

Final words from Gregg Strasser

Strasser is survived by his sister Janet Link and her husband Joseph Link of Montclair, New Jersey; one niece, Grace Link; and many friends.

Link says she loved her brother with all her heart. When they were kids, he taught her how to ice skate and helped teach her how to drive, too. He even tried to teach her surfboarding, but she never could master that balancing act.

“He taught me a lot,” Link says.

In a post to Strasser’s online memorial wall, she wrote that her brother always looked out for her when she was little. She called him “my hero.”

“I tried to pay it forward by watching out for him as his health failed these past few years,” she wrote. “We talked on the phone every day about books, music, politics, our quirky family ... you name it. I will miss him so much.”

About a year ago, Strasser gave his sister a short, poem-like statement to read whenever he died. The statement was posted on his memorial wall and also in his funeral program.

Here’s how Strasser said he wanted to be remembered after his death:

“If you remember anything of me

“After I leave this world

“Remember that I loved

“Even when it was foolish

“That I cared

“Even when it was unwanted

“. . . When my body is gone

“Remember my heart.”

− Kathryn Varn of the USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA contributed to this article.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1). You can also call at 239-335-0368.

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane Ian's victims: Remembering Gregg Strasser of Fort Myers