Events honor victims and survivors of Pulse on seven-year anniversary

In the midst of Pride celebrations this month, the Orlando community will come together today to bow their heads and remember the Pulse massacre that took place seven years ago in a gay nightclub south of downtown.

To pay respects to the 49 victims, survivors and first responders, local organizations have scheduled events and community conversations to lead up to tonight’s seven-year Pulse remembrance ceremony at 7 p.m. in Steinmetz Hall at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts.

The observance will feature performances and special remarks from the families of victims and survivors in addition to a reading of the names of the 49 people killed in the shooting along with a moment of silence.

Before the event, a church bell will ring 49 times at the First United Methodist Church of Orlando at 4 p.m., following the yearly tradition of joining churches around the globe as they toll their bells in honor of the victims.

“We need to continue to have an event to honor the lives and memory of those that are lost,” said Orlando City Commissioner Patty Sheehan, whose district includes Pulse.

“I remember the first year it was done, it was very important for those families to honor their loved ones… when [the victims] names were read aloud…people would stand up and cheer. That took me aback, but then I got to thinking, this is the wedding or the high school graduation ceremony that they’re never to going to have. Remembering them is a way to honor their lives that were taken away too young.”

Pulse Remembrance Day events started in early June with a 4.9-kilometer “CommUNITY Rainbow Run” and will continue through the end of this month with Ni Uno Mas Community Conversations, with QLatinx and Moms Demand Action on gun violence on June 30.

Deborah Bowie, the executive director of the onePULSE Foundation, said this year the charity is focused on collaboration efforts with other organizations that work to help those impacted by the Pulse tragedy.

“The message I’m hoping to communicate is how important it is for the foundation to be an inclusive, authentic organization that reflects a mantra that I’ve been hearing and that is: ‘Nothing for us without us,’ and we have to exemplify that.”

Virtual “care rooms” are scheduled Tuesday, a day after the PULSE anniversary at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., to debrief with community members and other responders and organizational staff.

Last Thursday, the grassroots organization QLatinx, which works to advance and empower Central Florida’s LGBTQ+ Latinx community, hosted a hybrid discussion for survivors and supporters.

“The main purpose is to have time to acknowledge not only the impacts of the tragedy over our professional and personal lives, but to identify all the work that has been done through many efforts and initiations that have supported survivors and the community,” an event description read.

It was Latin night at Pulse when a lone gunman entered and started firing his bullets. At the time, June 12, 2016, the mass shooting was the worst in modern U.S. history, leaving 49 dead and 68 seriously injured.

“We have a responsibility, now seven years in, to be much more inclusive and community-oriented than we have been,” Bowie said.

“We have to get away from one keeper of the story…It’s the entire community’s story and all the people from the first responder, to the person who made it out alive. Everyone of their stories is a legacy…We want to amplify those stories, but it’s not our story to own.”

Last Saturday, the seventh-annual “CommUNITY Rainbow Run,” which was presented this year by Orlando Health and Hard Rock International, in partnership with the UCF DeVos Sport Business Management Program, brought in 2,700 participants.

Scott Bowman, a spokesperson for the foundation, said runners included 35 family members of victims of Pulse, 20 survivors and 102 first responders.

Proceeds went toward the onePULSE Foundation and its plans to build a Pulse memorial and museum.

Earlier this month, the nonprofit announced it had redesigned original plans for the museum and memorial after learning the project would have cost the foundation more than $100 million. Now, onePULSE is going forward with the adaptive reuse of a 47,000-square-foot industrial building it owns in Orlando’s SoDo neighborhood to turn it into a museum and community space.

The foundation has started underground work for a “survivors walk” that will link the Pulse nightclub on South Orange Avenue to the hospital. Meanwhile, the future for the site of the club, where the tragedy took place is unknown. The site was intended to be donated, but plans fell through after the foundation announced it could not reach an agreement with the nightclub property owners, which includes its former executive director and founder, Barbara Poma, who officially departed from the organization in April.

Poma said she cannot donate the property due to a third party investor that is not willing to give the property away for free.

In her former role with the onePULSE Foundation, Poma spent years spearheading an effort to create a memorial and museum to honor the 49 lives lost in the Pulse 2016 massacre. But some survivors and families of victims of the Pulse shooting took issue with her role in the foundation as a partial owner of the nightclub.

The foundation said it is exploring its options to build a memorial at the museum property; build a memorial on a site next to the former nightclub; or potentially build two memorials at both locations.

In a statement to the Orlando Sentinel, Poma said when 49 lives were taken seven years ago, “hundreds more were changed forever for no reason other than hate. There is not a day that I don’t remember those young and bright lives, all that has been taken and the unimaginable and unavoidable grief their loved ones experience.”

“My hope is that families, survivors, first responders and their loved ones continue to work toward healing and peace,” she said.