BY MICHAEL MARTINEZ-ESQUIBEL
As autumn approaches, a chill in the air reminds us that the winds of change are ever present; and no more than today do we need to hold this reminder close to our hearts. With tension increasing in our divisive culture, it is important to remember the steps that we have taken to get where we are. In the immortal words of philosopher George Santayana, “Those who do not learn history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat them.” This is why the name Matthew Shepard must not be forgotten.
On Oct. 6, 1998, a gay university student by the name of Matthew Shepard was kidnapped, beaten, and tied to a fencepost on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. Shepard would spend the next 18 hours tightly bound to that fence, fighting for his life in freezing temperatures, before a mountain biker discovered him the next evening. Shepard was then helicoptered to Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, Colorado, where he was cared for until he passed away on Oct. 12.
After the incident, members of the New York Tectonic Theater Company made pilgrimage to Laramie in search of answers. Over the following years, they conducted upwards of two hundred interviews with residents of the sleepy Wyoming town, some of whom actually knew Matthew Shepard personally. From those interviews, the company compiled and produced The Laramie Project, a narrative theater piece describing what happened in the town after Shepard’s beating. The play has since been produced across the country, and this fall, the Evergreen Theater Company will bring it to Evergreen’s campus.
The Laramie Project serves both as a reminder of the transgressions committed and as a way to honor Matthew. When director of the Evergreen Theater Company, Walter Grodzik, chose to produce The Laramie Project, he did not know that this year is the twentieth anniversary of Shepard’s death. A number of the cast members had not heard of Matthew Shepard before picking up the script.
Frankly, if it weren’t for my theater fanatic of a mother, I wouldn’t have known the story myself.
There are a lot of people that don’t remember what happened, and at the time it was a national and world news event,” Grodzik recalled during our interview. With the recent passing of the twentieth anniversary, Grodzik believes now is the perfect time to put on this show. “It’s been a coming together of a wide variety of circumstance,” said Grodzik. “This play was exactly what we should be doing right now.”
News of Matthew Shepard’s beating reached the national spotlight, and seemed to shock America to its core. The crimes committed against Matthew appeared to be motivated by hate. America seemed to wait on pins and needles to hear about this case. With the AIDS crisis occurring one decade prior to Shepard’s beating, a paranoid homophobia loomed in the United States. The defendants in the Shepard case, Aaron James McKinney and Russell Arthur Henderson, clung to the “gay panic” defense. The “gay panic” defense excuses the actions of the accused on the basis of an unwanted encounter with a homosexual individual. An outlandish legal defense such as this has historical precedent, and can be compared to the “Twinkie Defense” adopted by Dan White while on trial for the murders of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. The perpetrators in Shepard’s case, Aaron James McKinney and Russell Arthur Henderson, were both from Laramie and were only 21 years old at the time of the attack — the same age as Matthew.
Shepard was openly gay, and alone at the bar the night of his attack, making him an easy target for such hate. After word of Matt’s assault became public knowledge, he quickly became a symbol in the fight for gay rights. After Matthew’s death, vigils were held in some of the country’s largest cities including San Francisco, New York City, and Washington D.C.
The magnitude of Matthew’s murder shook the earth, and the aftershock was felt by many — Grodzik included. “People are really mourning the loss of this gay man, I don’t think it had happened in this country before,” recalled Grodzik with a somber voice. “It was just very common that a queer-identified person — particularly trans people at that time — would be murdered, and no one would give a shit, and all of the sudden this happened to Matthew and the world seemed to stop. It was unbelievable to me, that after the devastation of AIDS that they actually stopped. They mourned the loss of this young gay man, they paid attention. It was just unfathomable to me that that actually was the response because it appeared that the country had finally woken up, and the world woke up too.”
Yet, in the eyes of many, the country is still asleep. No matter how much time passes, hate does not seem to disappear. Twenty years after the tragic death of their son, Dennis and Judy Shepard still struggle to find a final resting place for his ashes. They had held onto Matthew’s urn since his passing, for they feared that burying him in a public place would leave him subject to vandalism. However, two decades after their first born’s death, the Shepard family has finally found a home for Matthew, with the help of Bishop Gene Robinson.
Bishop Robinson of the Episcopal church — the first only gay man to hold the position — worked with both the National Cathedral and the Shepard family to ensure Matthew a safe final resting place. The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. — which has historically advocated the inclusion of the LGBTQ community — offered to house his urn. On Oct. 26, 2018, almost exactly twenty years to the date of his death, Matthew Shepard was laid to rest in Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral. Internet headlines published after ceremony gave Matthew four final parting words: you are safe now.
In a 2017 interview, Judy Shepard shared her emotions surrounding hate crimes; more specifically the one committed against her son in Oct. 1998. “I’m angry that people who knew better let this happen, that we let this happen.“ She spoke of the fear she held for the current state of our nation, a sentiment many seem to empathize with. “You have to channel that into making things happen. It has to be what gets you up and keep moving.”
Although the winds of change might whip us around every once in a while, as long as we keep it at our back, we will keep moving forward. As we carry on, we must remember what happened to Matthew, as to not repeat the same mistake; and this is why Grodzik is devoted to telling this story. “It’s really simple: to be remembered, your story must be told, and we’re telling the story,” said Grodzik. “We are remembering him.”
