A community came together Saturday night at a Kailua-Kona bar to pay their respects to the 49 people slain at a gay nightclub in Orlando seven days ago.
Seeing the faces and biographies of the dead papering one wall of My Bar in Kona’s Old Industrial Area had a profound effect on many as people gathered to share their feelings of anger, solidarity, and loss.
“Reading through those names and seeing those faces, it hits home,” said Rocco Carbone, the bar’s co-owner. “A lot of those people were very young and they were just like us. They had plans, hopes and dreams.”
All of which were taken away by the touch on a trigger.
Jack Wallace is straight. Inside, he’s angry.
“It’s all too frequent,” he said. “Nothing seems to change. There is this really divisive element out there in the world. It doesn’t have to be that way. You’d think there would be a point where people would realize we’re not different.”
At the door, folks were handed glow sticks and strips of paper, each written with the name of one of the murdered. When that victim’s name was called, the stick was broken in memory of that life lost.
Among them: Brenda McCool, who beat cancer twice and was the mother of a gay son with whom she was dancing when the shooter opened fire. Akya Murray, at 18 the youngest of the murdered, a high school basketball star with a full ride to college and a promising future. Amanda Alvear, a nursing student whose Snapchat offered some of the first glimpses of the carnage. Jason Josaphat, 19, who called his mother from the club during the shooting and was told to hide in the bathroom. And Yilmary Sulivan, 24, who left behind a husband and two babies.
Victor Fenhaus took in the photos in silence.
“Right now I feel we’re a little lost,” he said. “We’ve lost our way.”
Kate Bell, who is bisexual, was at Saturday’s tribute partly because women in general are unsafe, regardless of their sexual orientation.
“Women aren’t safe on the street. They aren’t safe in bars,” she said. “You don’t have to be out to be unsafe.”
Carbone said his generation is lucky compared to what was suffered by the gay communities of past decades. That said, there is still ground that must be covered before this is a world of people treating each other with dignity and arms wide open, he said.
“Some day, we won’t be known as the LGBT community,” he said. “We’ll just be somebody’s friend, somebody’s father, somebody’s sister.”
The 120 people who gathered wrote farewell messages on a banner that read “We Are Orlando.” They wrote things like”Living life, even as it is taken away.” As each name was read off, one more stick lit up the darkened interior of the bar.
Ari Dennis is a burlesque dancer and spoken word performer at Pulse, the nightclub where the shooting played out. Dennis, who is transgender, lives in Orlando and was on the Big Island because they are trying to relocate here. Their friends texted them while the carnage was happening.
“This whole week since it happened, it’s been suffering from afar,” they said. “My friends are donating blood, my partners, my community are raising funds. Everyone I know was impacted. I know people who were there that night and I know people who were going to be there. I’m so glad there was something for the community here. Even though it happened in Orlando, the fear radiated everywhere. Even here in Hawaii, we feel it.”
