The evening began in Wadsworth Park, where participants gathered in prideful attire. Cooke credits the beginnings of pride events in Flagler to 18-year-old Eryn Harris, who is referred to as the mastermind of the group and is now creating an official nonprofit Flagler Pride brand. “The first Flagler Pride event was actually a march for Pulse,” said Abbey Cooke, a Flagler school district teacher and one of the Flagler Pride committee members. Then too, anti-gay violence became a catalyst for what was then merely gay and lesbian pride: BTQ+ are the decades’ additions to awareness and richer identities. But the Pulse massacre was no less of a marker in Florida and its smaller communities than the Stonewall rebellion was in New York two generations ago. The year of the Pulse shooting aside, there were no other LGBTQ+ pride events in Flagler until last year.
Five years later, members and allies of the LGBTQ+ community are still healing and advocating as they remember the fallen, in Flagler as elsewhere. The massacre has been a catalyst for advocacy on LGBTQ+ and gun control issues. The mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub on South Orange Avenue in Orlando in 2016 still leaves the LGBTQ+ community melancholic and traumatized.
