For Chicagoan Angie Wines, the June 26 Pride Parade was to be like it had been for the past several years.
Wines, who lives on the West Side, set up a large tailgating party along Halsted.
"I'm a chef and I love to cook," she said. "We show up at the parade early, stake out a spot and watch the parade. What we do is no different from what other people do, just on a larger scale. This year, we had about 135 people join us; last year it was about 150."
But Wines decided that her 2016 Pride gathering was an opportunity to pay tribute to the the persons killed and injured in the Pulse Nightclub shooting. She and friends created signs that remembered the individuals who lost their lives there.
"I was inspired by the people who took part in the vigil at Center on Halsted," Wines recalled. "It kind of made me ask myself, how we wanted to remember these people. I wanted to bring attention back to them and away from the politics that have surrounded this, back to the people whose lives were lost."
She and six friends spent the Friday evening of Pride weekend creating the signs. Wines' girlfriend suggested tying the signs together "to represent these bonds that would not be broken," Wines added. "I had a lot of help, but I didn't know what I was getting into."
Preliminary weather reports suggested rain, so they thought the signs would need laminating to protect them from the elements. Wines arranged for an expedited job at her local FedEx outlet, which was likely to be an expensive proposition. But she was stunned when, after placing the order, the FedEx manager called her back.
"She was so moved by what we were doing, she took up a collection from her employees to cover most of it," Wines said. The manager raised the rest of the money contacting other outlet managers.
Wines was impressed by how respectfully people looked through the memorial the afternoon of the parade. "People were really taking their time to go through," she said. "That made me feel like, as challenging as this was to do, it was worth it."