Hundreds gathered in Cody on Sunday evening to remember the late Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this month. They also were encouraged to continue the conservative activist’s work.

“If we want to honor Charlie Kirk, let’s pick up where he left off,” Pat Alphin, the pastor of Cody Cowboy Church, told the crowd.

Kirk co-founded the group Turning Point USA — promoting conservative views on high school and college campuses — and became a major figure in President Donald Trump’s orbit and the broader Make America Great Again movement.

“He is a turning point in our country,” Vince Vanata said at Sunday’s vigil.

Vanata said he briefly met Kirk in 2020 and “instantly recognized this was a man on a mission.”

Kirk’s gift was engaging and debating with people from all different backgrounds, doing so despite “death threats and disparaging messages from radicals, the uninformed and often [the] media,” Vanata said.

Kirk was shot and killed while he was speaking to a crowd of students and others at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10.

In tandem with promoting political engagement, Kirk also encouraged his audiences to follow the Christian faith. That included urging young men to get married and raise families. 

Vanata said Kirk was following a calling from God.

“… it cost him his life,” Vanata said, “and that is a tragedy.”

The quarter-hour vigil in Cody — which organizers said drew close to 400 people — featured the singing of “Amazing Grace” and a prayer alongside the speeches. It followed Kirk’s nearly five-hour memorial service, held earlier in the day at a packed stadium in his home state of Arizona. Speakers there included President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Kirk’s widow, Erika.

During her tearful remarks, Erika Kirk said she forgives the 22-year-old man who stands accused of murdering her husband.

“I forgive him because it was what Christ did and is what Charlie would do,” she said. “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer, we know from the Gospel, is love and always love — love for our enemies and love for those who persecute us.”

Erika Kirk has been named Turning Point USA’s new leader, and she promised that “every part of our work will become greater.”

In remarks made shortly after her husband’s death, she said “evildoers” were responsible for the assassination and that they had no idea what they had just unleashed.

At Sunday’s vigil, Alphin prayed that Erika Kirk’s remarks would prove true and that the incident “wakes up the sleeping giant of the church.”

Alphin called it “not a time to step back but to step up.” The pastor specifically criticized an absence of prayer in public schools.

“When you take God out of something, Satan will fill the vacuum,” Alphin said. “That’s why we have chaos in our schools today. That’s why we have young men like the one who shot Charlie Kirk.”

He told the crowd that “we need to get this woke stuff out of our schools,” calling on parents, grandparents and others to step up and get school boards to “listen to us.”

In his remarks, Vanata said those who take issue with Charlie Kirk’s ideas should not be afraid.

“Since Charlie was assassinated, we have not seen riots in the streets, we have not seen buildings being looted and burning,” Vanata said, “instead we see people moving closer to God.”

There have been preliminary discussions about starting Turning Point USA chapters in Park County schools.