Gerai Curtis Flowers

Gerai was a puzzle, a mystery, and a walking contradiction. He was a giant at 6 foot six inches and a beanpole through his twenties. He once had to remove the moon roof of a car so he could ride inside with his head peaking out. He had a devilish sense of humor and would pick up grown men and kiss them on the cheek. A shocking experience for them and the source of loud rumbling laughter from him. He was curiously humble not wanting to talk about himself, his past, or his family. He had 16 siblings but few people knew. He was an average student but got a perfect score on the SATs. He was a hippie flower child wearing beads, reading poetry and books voraciously but volunteered to go to Vietnam after college. At the time, he was married and would have been exempt. In Vietnam, he was Agent Oranged several times and wounded twice. He was in Pleiku, Bam Me Thau, and FireBase 5. The second time he was wounded, he nearly died and spent 6 months in the VA Hospital in Augusta, Georgia. He always refused to discuss his service with anyone. He survived those injuries but paid a high price. He was an amazing Chef, graduating from the Army's prestigious culinary school and working at Brennan's Atlanta as sous chef to Paul Prudhomme. He was employed at the World's Fair in New Orleans in 1986 and ran the cookie concession overseeing every cookie baked for the event. He catered C Krewe parties for Mardi Gras in New Orleans. As a teenager, he was a very skilled artist working in acrylics but gave it up after the Army. He was the beloved first grand child of his maternal grandmother. When she died in 2002, he distanced himself from his family. The constant in his life since he was a teenager was his Baha'i Faith. It was his Baha'i friends that he never gave up on and they never gave up on him. "Death has nothing to do with going away. The sun sets. The moon set. But they are not gone."

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