COLORADO SPRINGS — Moments before the hate-filled attack at Club Q last year, that Nov. 19 evening was just like any other of the 1,042 Saturday nights the beloved club was open.
Derrick Rump was leading the night shift, slinging drinks behind the bar alongside Daniel Aston, who had just finished his shift and was helping another employee with the computer near the door. It was Raymond Green Vance’s first time at Club Q to watch a drag show with his girlfriend’s family. Ashley Paugh, an ally to the LGBTQ community, came to enjoy a drink. Kelly Loving, who was visiting Colorado Springs for the first time on a trip from Memphis, had just arrived.
On the one-year mark of the mass shooting, hundreds of people gathered Sunday outside of the club in Colorado Springs to honor those five, who were killed in the attack, the 18 people injured and a community forever changed in the rampage that lasted less than a minute.
A flag with rainbow stripes and colors of black and brown — to represent marginalized LGBTQ people of color — fluttered above the building against a colorless, cloudy sky.
Matthew Haynes opened Club Q more than 20 years ago, when the city’s only gay club was on the verge of closing and Haynes and his friends still needed a place to go. Over two decades, 160 bartenders served drinks inside the Club, thousands of entertainers graced its stages and tens of thousands of people crossed through its doors, Haynes said.
“Many, like me, were closeted, questioning, uncertain and scared,” Haynes said at Sunday’s memorial event. “Once inside, we found a welcome face, a hug, friends. Lifelong friendships, partnerships, marriages, all have come from passing through these doors.”
Families of victims, survivors and community members hugged in the club’s parking lot, some teary-eyed and with rainbow flags draped over their shoulders and “Club Q Strong” pins attached to their coats.
With a round of applause, the crowd honored the three people who confronted the shooter, saving countless lives. John Thomas was the first to confront the shooter and was shot in the chest as he fought alone for more than 30 seconds, before Richard Fierro joined and the two fought for six more minutes. Then, a transwoman joined and kicked the shooter with her high heels.
In the wake of the shooting, Haynes said thousands of people from across the country visited to show support for the community. On Friday, the city of Colorado Springs approved plans for a permanent memorial, which will consist of five columns and 17 boulders, along with benches for people to sit and reflect, Haynes said.
Colorado Springs, a city with a reputation for its religion-infused conservatism, has come a long way, but more work must be done to create inclusive spaces, Mayor Yemi Mobolade said.
Survivors of the Club Q shooting and family members stand during a moment of silence to honor a Progress pride flag in Colorado Springs, one year after the shooting at the club that killed five people. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)
“We must do better. We will do better. We will work to expel hate, we will address mental health and we will work together toward acceptance, inclusion, and creating a city where everyone feels safe, accepted and welcomed,” said Mobolade, who moved to Colorado Springs in 2010 to start a church. “Colorado Springs has come a long way and we acknowledge we still have work to do.”
What can I do, now that you’re gone? Now that you’ve moved to that great beyond?
My bicycle wheel has lost its spokes, no one’s here to laugh at my dad jokes.
You lit up the room with your smile and wit, you and Club Q made a good fit.
But random bullets from an angry man took away all of your dreams and plans.
Now all that loved you must make a new start, with your light to guide us within our hearts.
— Jeff Aston, sharing a poem he wrote for his son, Daniel who was killed in the Club Q attack
John Suthers, who was mayor on the day of the attack, remembered the shooting and its aftermath as his “darkest days” as mayor.
“As a community, we must never forget what happened here,” Suthers said Sunday. “We owe it to those who died here and suffered here. My hope today is the same as it was a year ago, that our community will not let it be defined by the depraved acts of a sociopath, but rather by the ways it continues to respond to this tragedy with love.”
U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper and Gov. Jared Polis spoke Sunday and a letter from Vice President Kamala Harris was read.
“It’s easy at times to feel overwhelmed by all the hate that’s out there. But I hope that on this anniversary, we see it instead as an opportunity to double down on hope and love. I think that that is really the best way to honor Raymond, Kelly, Daniel, Derrick and Ashley and keep their memories with us,” said Polis, the country’s first elected openly gay governor.
On Monday, Community Health Partnership and Bread and Roses Legal Center will host an event for Transgender Day of Remembrance with speakers Colorado State Poet Laureate Andrea Gibson, Wyatt Kent, who was Aston’s boyfriend and drag performer, and others supporting the LGBTQ community.
The event will honor Aston, one of the club’s beloved bartenders killed in the attack, and Loving, who was visiting Club Q on a weekend trip from Memphis.
Since 2013, at least 334 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed across the country, according to data shared from New York City-based nonprofit Human Rights Watch. Nearly 70% of them were killed with a gun, the nonprofit reported.
It was at Club Q where Svetlana Heim, a survivor of the attack, had one of her first dates with a woman. She remembered going up to bartender Derrick Rump to ask if the two looked good together and if it looked like the date was going well.
He told her to ask her date herself, Heim said, remembering the start of her friendship with Rump, whom she often went to for honest advice and someone she looked up to like “an older sibling.”
Heim, 25, found herself at Club Q at least once a week, before she got a job as a “shot girl,” making and selling Jell-O shots and helping the bartenders. It was a job that helped her embrace her physical appearance, ease her social anxiety and come out of her shell, she told The Colorado Sun before Sunday’s ceremony.
“That job helped me feel good about myself — you could literally see it if you saw the first week of me working as a shot girl and the last — I was dressed wildly different because I was starting to get more comfortable in my own skin,” Heim said. “Every week, Daniel and Derrick would hype me up.”
Heim has since got a new bartending gig working alongside two other Club Q survivors, who help remind her she is not alone on the hard days. When she stands behind the bar, her mind often drifts to her bartending friends, Aston and Rump, and she smiles.
“Even though it has been a really rough year, I think for literally anybody involved no matter their victim or survivor status, I know we will heal from this and it is just going to take time,” Heim said.
“You just have to trust that process. It’s a hard pill to swallow to realize that only time can heal this one.”