After Pulse: Benjamin Lehnertz

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Father Benjamin Lehnertz is a Roman Catholic priest of the diocese of Orlando. On Sunday June 12, 2016, he had finished his first mass, and parishioners were gathered in the narthex. They asked him if he had heard about the shooting at Pulse. This was the first he heard about it. That was about 25 minutes from where he lived. He visits people in the hospital right down the street from the nightclub. That hit close to home.

He then got a text from his brother who lives in Australia. Early in the day, the numbers were about 15 to 20 people dead, That number climbed through the day. It kept getting worst and worst. More details came from people throughout the morning as the 12:15 mass approached. The heaviness of it descended on the parish.

Benjamin lived in Colorado when Columbine happened. He was in middle school. He had learned how to brace for the news of a mass shooting. He thought to himself, “we are not going to let them make us scared.”

By the afternoon he was seated with this mother, and stepfather. he felt powerless and shell shocked. What could he do to help? A deacon called, and said, they needed Spanish speaking ministers. Benjamin knows enough Spanish to get by, he holds mass in Spanish, he can read Spanish.

So he and his parents went down to the Hampton Inn. They both have crisis management expertise in their backgrounds. There was a sea of people, many traumatized. Family were trying to find where their loved ones were. It is always better to know what you are dealing with. Questions weigh on people. That was a very unique scenario to walk into. It is not a scene he would ever want to revisit.

Organizationally it was a nightmare. There were plenty of counselors and plenty of ministers, deacons and priests. There were some confirmed deaths, and they were trying to notify family members. Someone was coordinating clergy. He had been to hospitals so he was familiar with breaking such news to family. It was a very slow process. The family would need to be identified and the brought to a room in the hotel where the news was forwarded. They would react as they needed.

Clergy huddled in the hallway. If the family had a catholic background then someone would come out and ask, “Can you come and be with us?” Over the course of three hours they saw like 3 families. He decided that waiting in the hallway was a waist of time so he went downstairs to see if people needed to talk. He sat with people who were crying or alone. His was there to listen and offer pastoral support. His parents did the same, they found one person and talked to them.

Late in the day he had to get back to the church for the evening mass. He left his car with his parents and had the deacon drive him back. The evenings homily was very different than the morning homily. The church was packed that night. He spoke from the heart. He asked all to pray for the families. For the first time he put his head in his hands and sobbed.

After mass his mom had driven back from the Hampton Inn. She hugged him an cried. She said, “Ben, it was so awful.” The room was full of people who had not been notified at the end of the day. Someone in a uniform stood up on a desk and said, “everyone be quiet and listen closely.” He then he proceeded to read a list of names. No one knew what that list was. Someone would hear their child’s name and they didn’t know weather to panic or be consoled. Chatter drowned out the announcement. People could not hear the names. Finally he announced that the names were people who were injured but survived the shooting. Staff from the hospital were outside. People who heard the name of a loved one were asked to exit the hotel. Hospital staff would give more information.

90% of the people remained in the room. They were told that there was no information about their loved ones. People were told to go to the Beardall Center the next day. Everyone walked out to a wall of news cameras and the worst question of their lives looming in their minds.

After Pulse: Stephanie Piniero

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Stephanie Piniero works for the Hispanic Federation, Somos Orlando. Stephanie was in Argentina when she hear about the Pulse Nightclub shooting via social media. She got texts asking if she was OK. At 8am she saw that 20 were reported dead. Sadly in America we are used to mass shootings. She stayed glued to her phone all day. At around 11am her host family was watching TV and the Pulse shooting was on every channel.

She had clients and friends who went to Pulse often. Her friends were OK. The updates kept coming. It was like a nightmare that didn’t stop. She had left her job a Zebra Coalition  for the vocational exchange in Argentina. The Zebra Coalition was ground zero for helping in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre. Stephanie was the only Spanish speaking staff at the Coalition so she felt guilty that she wasn’t there to help.

When she got back, the streets around Pulse were still closed off. In the beginning of July a position opened up at Somos Orlando. Two weeks later she was hired. Within a few days she was seeing clients. One Orlando money helped fund the services. Survivors who were able to escape that night had a different application than those who were injured. This happened to a community that was already marginalized. In some cases the main bread winner died that night. So they were a few steps away from loosing everything. Sometimes a basic service was to help get furniture.

One father of a shooting victim wanted a translation of a the autopsy report. The coroners office does not do that, so she translated. He needed to know.

Hispanic Federation has many different advocacy avenues, like LGBT rights, immigration rights, healthcare rights and reproductive rights. Stephanie’s roll has transformed, to work on reproductive rights and reproductive justice, with a focus on abortion rights in Florida.

After Pulse: Anthony Mauss

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Tony Mauss, was the husband of the writer, activist, and incredible columnist Billy Maines, who passed away on July 21, 2017 at the age of 45. It was always an event to be with Billy. When Billy moved from his job at the Orlando Weekly to Watermark, life got busy. Everyone wanted to speak to him. He knew the issues inside and out. He always had fun at the forefront but was happy to discuss any issue. He could make a point the way an Olympic gymnast could land a perfect floor routine.

When Pulse happened, things changed. Tony was up at 1AM on June 12, 2016. He saw what was happening on Facebook. He was getting texts as it was happening. Their home is just two or three blocks from Pulse so the sirens could be heard. He made the conscious decision to not wake Billy up. He knew As Billy woke up, Tony asked him not to look at his phone. OF course Billy had to look at his phone.

Pulse changed Billy. It pulled him in. Things got very serious. The second he woke up he went to the scene of the shooting. Billy’s writing went on to become the vulnerable face of Pulse. He wrote that the shooting was a hate crime and that he was frightened and that he could not believe it happened here in Orlando. He was honest and sincere in facing the tragedy. He gave everything.

After Pulse: Dr. Tracy Wharton

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content.

Dr. Tracy Wharton is a social work faculty member at the University of Central Florida and a licensed clinical social worker in the state of Florida and Alabama. After the Pulse shooting Dr. Wharton was involved in organizing and providing volunteer counseling for survivors and victims families.

Tracy’s phone started pinging early, before the sun came up, the night of the shooting. The third time it pinged, she had to pick it up. Facebook had pinged with the mark yourself safe feature. Her sister left a message making sure she was OK. Other friends started to text. Her sister texted “Get up and turn on the TV.”

The Knights Clinic is literally around the corner from the club so she was familiar with Pulse. She had driven by it 100 times. All the residents at the hospital immediately went back to help. Faculty started texting one another.

By early morning she was in contact with social worker colleagues. They started to figure out how to plug in and organize to help. She knew families would be showing up. There would be people at the barricades. She went to the memorial that afternoon.

The next day she began work and it didn’t stop for weeks. There was a Google Doc spreadsheet that pointed out different places needing support. There were a few dozen names to start, 48 hours later there were 300 or so people, a week out there were 600 people on the sheet who wanted to volunteer time. There were about 13 different locations where social workers were needed and people would sign up for time slots.

A lot of people went to clubs to support patrons. Club owners wanted social workers there. Bartenders were feeling stressed out. She was called on to go to Southern Nights. There was a flamboyant sparkling fundraiser going on at the club. She let the bartender know she would be outside should anyone want to talk. It was too loud to talk inside.

Moms were waiting outside as well, sitting on the curb all night. There is something terrifying about the mindset at the time that moms felt the need to wait outside to make sure their kids came out alive. Police were on hand with wand metal detectors and they were great. But the moms felt the strong need to protect their children.

She realized that social workers would need some way to be identified. An artist donated the rainbow graphic and a local business donated pins. About 80 were created. She wanted to give pins to Spanish social workers who were working with victim’s families directly. When she showed the pins she was asked, “Do you have any in Spanish?” She hadn’t thought of it, so she decided to pay for another print run out of her own pocked to make it right.

 

After Pulse: Geoffrey Paquette

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Advisory: Please note that this post is about the Pulse nightclub massacre on June 12, 2016. It contains sensitive and difficult to read content. Post written with narrator’s consent.

Geoffrey Paquette is a union leader and is one of the protestors who was arrested for a sit in Marco Rubio‘s office.

On Sunday Geoff went to Centra Care because he was sick. His wife was away in Atlantic City. She texted to ask if he was OK. He called her back and she asked, “Did you hear the news?” He hadn’t. He turned on the news to find out what had happened. He hadn’t been to Pulse before but they lived just a mile from the club.

He went to the vigil downtown. there were about 50,000 people there. There were so many people, you couldn’t even really move. It was incredible. Then there was the vigil in front of the new performing arts center.

The union began to pull together with the activist groups, like Organize Now and Jobs for Justice, CWA, and the Unitarian Church in Orlando after Pulse. There were weekly meetings. There was an outpouring of support where people felt that had to do something.

Marco Rubio was one of the first politicians to stand in front of camera to say how horrible the Pulse shooting was. However he does nothing to help Floridians in terms of better paying jobs. Laws are needed to benefit working people in the state. He didn’t support any bill to outlaw assault weapons. Prayers for the families are empty without meaningful actions.

The union was involved in the planning for the Marco Rubio sit in. Most of the Union staff of about 25 who went to the sit in are hotel workers. About half the staff went. They met at Organize Now’s office prior to the sit in. They were not even sure if they could get in the building. They filed into the building in s line. The security guards must have been on a bathroom break. The lobby was empty. Everyone sat don in the lobby. When the guard got back from the bathroom, he found 80 to 100 people sitting in the lobby. He shouted, “OK, everyone out!” This was a way to apply pressure against those, like Rubio,  who did nothing following the Pulse shooting. It was a way to push for what is right. You have to put your money here your mouth is. Geoff was arrested and he is proud that he stood up for what he believes in. It was the right thing to do. Unfortunately Rubio is still in office.

After Pulse: Jennifer Foster

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Jennifer Foster is the owner of a company called Foster Productions which creates digital content. She is involved with the One Orlando Alliance. She had been active in the LGBTQ community since he moved to Orlando in 2001.

She started an Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in Orlando in 2004. She was on the local board for 10 years and on the national board for 8 years. It was a full time volunteer job. Once a month community members would meet at Pulse. Any time they needed to have an event they would ask Barbara Poma if they could have it at Pulse. There was room for socializing in one room, conversation in another and someone on a microphone in another. They always said yes. HRC Connect was a monthly LGBT community event. It got bigger an bigger.

Jennifer’s phone woke her up at about 4:30AM On June 12, 2016. She heard it vibrating. She started reading her text messages. A friend was asking if is she was OK. He had also left a voice mail in which he was sobbing. He needed to be sure she and her partner were not at Pulse. At 5AM she was still scrolling through messages and realized they needed to turn on the TV. Something was wrong. They sat in the living room trying to make sense of everything. It felt like a personal attack on her life, on her marriage, on the LGBT community, everything she had been fighting for. It was obvious that this was targeted at Pulse. It was Latin Night. What friends might have been there? She started texting and calling to check to be sure people were OK. Nothing made sense.

She called her tight knit group of friends that morning. Blood was needed so they went to One Blood on Michigan. They stood in line with thousands of other people. Cases of water were unloaded, they were given bananas and cookies, and sun block. She took pictures with her phone of the humanity, the beautiful outpouring our community, the response. There were brown people, and white people and gay people and straight people and old people and young people it was our community. This happened to all of us. The cities and the community’s response bears this out. They could not donate blood. They were sent home.

Back at home they drank wine and cried and ranted. They couldn’t stop watching the news. She realized that the community wasn’t ready for something like this. She called a community leader and they met the next day putting together lists of organizations and figuring out who ran what, and who knew, who and how everybody was working together, and what they were doing. That list didn’t exist. Everyone was out there doing their own thing. They started calling people and asking what they needed. Vigils were being planned and every organization called the mayor but all these organizations began overtaxing City Hall with all their separate  requests and demands. They were trying to create a funnel for information so the city could make an announcement once. Everyone’s fears and misconceptions were addressed. They got all the organizations in a room so they could ask questions. That was the first meeting of what is now the One Orlando Alliance on the Thursday after, the 16th of June. People met to communicate, collaborate. and help solve problems, to share information. to avoid duplication of things that were happening. It was a way to manage the chaos.

There were 18 organizations to start. 33 people showed up. People were there from the City, the County, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Seminole County Emergency Response Team, a team from Edelman. The goal was to create an equal hierarchy. At that meeting they were able to connect leaders with each other. By the end they all decided they have to work together. There was pre-Pulse but this was a post Pulse world. They set up a closed Facebook group to stay connected. All this was to happen behind the scenes. They were a coalition of community leaders. The strength and resolve created that day continues.

 

After Pulse: Roxy Santiago

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Roxy Santiago became involved after the Pulse Nightclub massacre helping the community. Th month before the tragedy she had been asked to be on the board of the Center. Her start date was to be June 28, 2016 but Pulse happened. She was also a volunteer with the Red Cross action disaster team.

Roxy woke up at about 5AM on June 12, 2016 because there were so many updates on her phone. A message said, “I hope Kay is OK.” Kay, a good friend was dating a bartender at Pulse. She scoured the internet and saw what had happened at Pulse. She couldn’t believe it at first.

She decided to text The Center. She decided that is where she needed to go to help out. She arrived about 7:30AM. She opened her laptop and started to find out what was needed, water food. She worked through Human Rights Campaign, Democratic Caucus, and her own Facebook. The phones were blowing up. Water was needed at the blood bank and then there was an immigration issue. It was four days of non- stop communication and gathering of resources.

At 9:30AM she had to go down to Pulse and do a live interview on TV representing The Center. There was so much going on that there wasn’t even a moment to shed a tear. After a hug you might well up but then you would have to get back. There was a real bond between the seven of so people who were there for the four days. A men’s clothing store donated the clothes for the funerals. So many elements came together that you normally do not thin about. Golden Chorale donated a refrigerator truck for the water. The truck couldn’t handle all the water, so The Track Shack let them use their warehouse space to store it. Whatever came in, went right out the back door to families.

Days later she went home and there was a program on TV where Lady Gaga read the names. For the first time tears flowed. She pulled herself back together and went right back to the Center. At the Dr. Phillips vigil she helped Patty Sheehan with the Spanish section of her speech. She didn’t make it to Lake Eola.

For the one year remembrance she wore the angel wings and went to Pulse at 2AM. That experience made her heart feel a little better and it kept her going. The work was ongoing.

After Pulse: Jessica Brooks

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At the time Pulse happened, Jessica Brooks was an emergency communications specialist for the Orlando Police Department. On that evening she was a call taker.  A call taker answers the 911 calls as well as non emergency calls and they collect all the information and they put it in the computer. A dispatcher then get that information and gets it out to the officers who are responding.

On June 11, 2016 she was on the 3PM to 3AM shift taking calls. The entire week had been insane to the point where they wondered what was going on. They were busier than they have ever been. They thought that maybe the Christina Grimmie murder at the Plaza Live was the end of the insanity. Everyone was burnt out. There had been a car jacking that day as well.

Six call takers worked the lines. She was handling six radio channels. She had worked as a dispatcher for eight hours and for her last four hours she became a call taker. Things usually slow down between midnight and two. At to AM it can pick up because that is when the clubs let out. She was on her last break and it was just before 2AM. She took a bathroom break and when she walked back in the room, the phones were ringing off the hook. Co-workers wee standing up. She heard there was an active shooter at Pulse nightclub. She wasn’t sure it was legit. She decided to plug back into her headset and take a few calls and she would take a break later.

She doesn’t remember many of the calls. The first call she does remember was the worst call she had ever taken. It was a female who was stuck in a bathroom. She was scared and begging for help. She encouraged her and let her know there was an officer on the scene. Then Jessica heard gun shots. They were not in the bathroom but they were close. Then they were in the bathroom. She heard screaming and horrible things. There was moaning for a while and then silence. She stayed on the line putting it on hold and handled other calls hoping she could go back to the line and get a response, but she didn’t.

The next call was a minor traffic accident with no injuries and she had to inform the driver that there were no officers available. Some of that evening is a blur. She took another call from someone what was trapped in an office at Pulse. She was on the phone with him for a while. There were ten others in the room. She got his basic information and kept him calm. Inside she was panicking because of hat had happened to her last caller. She didn’t want that to happen to him. Ultimately she got to hear who went in and pulled him get out. She could hear her co workers talking to people in bathrooms, and the same room as her survivor. She knew of parents who were texting their children who were trapped in the bathrooms.

It was a loud insane night. The final call she took that night was from the shooter. She couldn’t hear him because it was so loud in the room. He claimed his allegiance to an Islamic state. He said, “I am the Orlando shooter.” She muted her phone, and told her supervisor that she had the shooter o the phone. One of the lieutenants was there and he made his way to her so he could take over the call. She asked the shooter where he was, and he said he was at Pulse. Her computer screen showed a map, that map shows where the call is coming from. He was indeed right at Pulse. He spoke in another language at another point. Then he hung up on her. The lieutenant took her console and she was done for the night. She wanted to stay but they wouldn’t let her. Some people worked 16 hour shifts but they must have seen on her face that she had enough. The first call is what got to her the most. She could not sleep for 48 hours.

At home she did click on the news which announced that 20 had died. She felt sick and turned it off. She felt she would never be the same. A friend came over from work along with a pastor and she was surrounded by love. The next day she went to church in search of hope. She was off work for 4 days.

 

After Pulse: Deacon David Grey

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Deacon David Grey is from the Dioceses of Greater Orlando. Catholic Deacons, priests and the bishop provided pastoral care and leadership to the Hispanic community and the Orlando Community following the Pulse nightclub massacre.

On June 12, 2016 David as sitting at home on the front porch following a run. They found out what had happened. He connected with the chief operating officer at the Diocese. There tragedy was just down the street from the church. They needed to be involved in doing something. David needed to get dressed and get down there.

He ended up at the hotel which became the staging point. It was very chaotic since no one had experienced something of this magnitude before. Families clung to the hope that they would find out what happened to their loved one but those in charge needed to know who next of kin were. Finally at the end of the day news was not forthcoming for the families. It just wasn’t possible.

A Federal Response team was on route to Miami for a training exercise and they were diverted to Orlando. The Federal agents took control form city and county agencies. This threw off notifications. Some notifications were done. There was chaos and anger. One person walked around with a cell phone with a photo and he told people , “If this is your son, he is not coming home.” He was frustrated and angry. Pizzas came in that were ordered by people from California. People wanted to help in any way they could so there was food and water. Translators started manning tables and taking in supplies.

Word went out among the priests in the hospitals that there needed to be a response. Because of his position, as a deacon, David knows most of the priests. They needed to find priests who speak Spanish. He called Catholic Charities, to find people who were bi-lingual. He assembled a team who were bi-lingual and they immediately came down. This was on a Sunday when they had to juggle masses. The day was open and unstructured as they walked with families in their moment of uncertainty and need. The bishop had flown to California and when he landed he heard about the Pulse massacre and he got right back on a plane to Orlando.

Universal prayer services were planned soon afterward. A timetable structure had to be developed so that Spanish speaking priests could meet with families. Then came funeral arrangements. Family were coming in from other countries. In the midst of a challenge like this you have to have hope. That can be hard to come by. There were challenges in the family structures in the midst of the tragedy. Unity was the primary message moving forward in both the city response and the church response. We stand together, Orlando Strong.