Vigil In Southington For Slain Conservative Activist

PHILIP THIBODEAU PHOTOS

Mourners gathered at Southington’s Cadillac Ranch on Jude Lane Sunday afternoon for a prayer vigil in honor of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was fatally shot Wednesday at a public event in Utah.

The Connecticut State Republican Party organized the event. State GOP Chair Ben Proto offered opening and closing remarks; Southington Republican Town Committee Chair Mark LaJoie led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Cadillac Ranch, a country-and-western-themed entertainment hall and banquet facility, has a capacity of 1,000 persons. Its interior was packed throughout the vigil; long after the ceremony had started, a lengthy line of attendees stretched across the parking lot outside the building.

Participants came from throughout the state and beyond. Colleen Wolfe and Nick Fitzgerald drove down to Southington from Chicopee, Massachusetts. Colleen described herself as a person of faith and fan of Kirk who came to the event because she had been unable to find people back home with whom she felt comfortable expressing her grief over the killing.

Wilton’s Registrar of Voters Annalisa Stravato and New Haven Registrar Lisa Milone joined Proto in making speeches to the crowd inside. All three touched on similar themes, calling for social unity and urging conservatives to engage with their neighbors in the same way Kirk did. Proto encouraged members of the audience to “get off their cellphones and get out of the chatrooms” – an allusion to the online chatrooms where accused killer Tyler Robinson is said to have spent time – and talk to people face-to-face.

Another common theme was the idea that Kirk had joined the ranks of American notables struck down in their prime by assassins. Proto expressly compared him to Martin Luther King Jr.; Stravato extended the comparison to include King, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesus.

A bus belonging to "The Logical Conservative" parked in the lot outside the facility bore the same message – that Charlie Kirk was just the latest in a line of American heroes running from the flag-raisers of Iwo Jima to Martin Luther King Jr. to John F. Kennedy to Donald Trump:

Greeting attendees was a man dressed as a Revolutionary-War drummer. He played his instrument before the entrance to Cadillac Ranch – which, as it happens, lies just a few feet away from the bridge dedicated the previous week to fallen Trooper First Class Aaron Pelletier.