Where Were You When Charlie Kirk was Shot?
Reflecting on the one-year mark since the tragic passing of Charlie Kirk, this piece looks back at the shockwave of September 10, 2025, exploring the raw public grief, the personal memories of working in the grassroots movement, and why preserving these ordinary human stories matters for history.
SEPTEMBER 2026SOUND MIND LIVING
Never Forgotten
The afternoon of September 10, 2025, brought a sudden, violent fracture to the political grassroots—and to the work we were doing within it. Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA, was fatally shot during an outdoor campus debate event at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
As I wrote in my reflection on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, preserving history isn't just about recording dates and macro events; it requires sharing how ordinary people quietly carried an extraordinary moment in history. Part of not forgetting a person is acknowledging how they impacted you, and recognizing that they can impact you deeply even in death—sometimes in ways you never expected.
When the news broke, I was working full time as a canvasser for Turning Point Action. I had spent the morning knocking on doors and speaking to voters when a text came through telling me Charlie had been shot. My immediate reaction was to pray for him, post on X asking others to do the same, and keep working. I kept knocking on doors through the afternoon before the devastating confirmation of his passing reached us. Some residents already had the news on their televisions; one man, choked up and visibly shaken, opened his door and told me simply, "We loved him." He already knew what I did not; Charlie Kirk was not going to make it.
The following week, our ballot-chasing team was given time off to process the tragedy. But sitting around and doing nothing has never come naturally to me, and I didn't feel right collecting money from Charlie’s nonprofit affiliate without putting in the work, so I went back out anyway. In hindsight, stepping back might have spared me some emotional weight. The public grief was raw and visceral. I watched grown men open up to a stranger and ugly cry. It was a deep, unexpected shockwave—people simply could not comprehend how profoundly the loss would hit them. After mourning with strangers, I woke up crying on several mornings before I even got out of bed. The grief arrived before I had time to reason with it. You expect to grieve a family member, but it is entirely disorienting to find yourself weeping over someone you only knew through a screen or a movement.
My employment with Turning Point had not ended on clean terms, leaving me in a strange, complicated emotional space. I pray for people and hope they are doing well while remaining deeply concerned about choices and administrative directions. Yet human grief and purpose operates outside of political and organizational boundaries.
Our connections ripple outward in surreal ways. This last year, I spoke with firsthand witnesses who shared how this impacted them. One of the editors for my memoir lived right in Orem, Utah, and had law enforcement officers running through her yard in the chaos following the shooting. A small world, stitched together by sudden tragedy. James Hamilton, of Gilbert, later noted something profound: that the death of Charlie Kirk hit him even harder than losing his own aging parents.
Just as I believe sharing everyday stories around September 11 is essential for collective healing, documenting these unexpected moments of national grief matters too. We are all connected by the shared weight of how history touches our doorsteps. When public figures are taken in violence, the shock travels straight into our neighborhoods, reminding us that trauma leaves a mark long after the cameras turn off.
Share the Stories That History Might Miss
I believe people should share their stories of where they were and how Charlie’s death affected them, because remembrance is one way of honoring his legacy. With the passage of time, even events that once felt impossible to forget can fade from public memory. We are already seeing how easily the personal reality of September 11 can be reduced to a date, a headline, or a brief lesson. If we want future generations to understand what this loss meant, we have to preserve more than the public record; we have to preserve the human record.
So I hope people will write down the ordinary details: the room they were in, the work they were doing, the person who called, the stranger who cried at the door, or the morning when grief met them before their feet touched the floor. These may seem like mundane stories, but together they reveal the unexpected grief the world carries. Sharing them is not about turning loss into spectacle. It is about refusing to let the quiet truth of that moment disappear.
I hope that one day a documentary is made from these stories—not only the loudest or most public accounts, but the small, unguarded moments that rarely make the news. Such a record could show how a single death moved through homes, workplaces, neighborhoods, and private mornings, reminding us that history is not carried only by those at its center. It is also carried by ordinary people who remember, grieve, and choose to tell the truth about what they felt.
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