Kaitlin Bennett speaks with Matthew Lloyd, vice president of Turning Point USA at UCF, during “FREEDOM: Built to Last — Honoring Charlie Kirk” at UCF Rosen College on Wednesday night.
Shaelyn McClunn
“I am Kaitlin Bennett, because of Charlie Kirk.”
Kaitlin Bennett spoke at UCF Rosen College during a Charlie Kirk memorial Wednesday night and described the apology she never got to give him.
The conservative activist and political content creator spoke at “FREEDOM: Built to Last — Honoring Charlie Kirk,” held one day before the first anniversary of Kirk’s death. Turning Point USA chapters at UCF and Rosen College hosted the memorial alongside the Central Florida Young Republicans.
Kirk founded Turning Point USA in 2012. According to the organization’s website, its mission includes organizing and educating Americans to promote fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government. He was 31 years old when he was shot and killed Sept. 10, 2025, while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.
For Bennett, the memorial marked a return to an organization she once represented and later publicly criticized. She resigned as a Turning Point USA campus coordinator in 2018 after a dispute with the organization. Bennett told attendees Wednesday that she then viewed Turning Point USA unfavorably for the next seven years and resented Kirk.
Two months before Kirk’s death, Bennett decided she wanted to contact him and apologize, she told attendees. She kept putting off the conversation.
Her experience with Kirk now shapes how she approaches unresolved conflicts with other people, like friends, family and those whom she disagrees with politically, Bennett said.
“Is a disagreement worth feeling regret if they were to die the next day, or two months later, never speaking to them again?” Bennett asked. “Is that how you want to leave things? Because for me, it was not. It wasn’t worth it. It wasn’t worth the way I left things.”
Attendee George Schau looks over materials at a Turning Point USA table during “FREEDOM: Built to Last — Honoring Charlie Kirk” at UCF Rosen College on Wednesday night.
Shaelyn McClunn
Bennett told The Charge that she has since acted on that lesson in other relationships.
“After his death, I reached out to people I have bad blood with that I haven’t talked to in many, many years,” Bennett said.
Some did not reciprocate, according to Bennett, but she said reaching out allowed her to know she had extended the opportunity herself.
Other speakers also encouraged attendees to engage with people whose beliefs differ from their own. Jessie Callahan, vice president of the Central Florida Young Republicans, told attendees not to avoid those conversations simply because they may disagree.
“Talk to them. Ask them why they believe what they believe,” Callahan said. “Challenge their ideas. Defend your own. And most importantly, listen.”
Beyond disagreement and reconciliation, speakers pointed to ways Kirk’s influence has continued through political involvement over the past year.
UCF freshman and political science major Griffin Witt told The Charge that Kirk’s death prompted him to learn more about Kirk and his views. Witt said he found that his own beliefs aligned more closely with Kirk’s than he previously thought and recently joined Turning Point USA at UCF.
While Witt’s political involvement with Turning Point USA began recently, Edgewater Mayor Diezel DePew traced his involvement in politics further back. DePew told attendees he first heard Kirk speak when he was 12 and later spoke with him as a teenager about wanting to pursue politics and public service.
“I had the honor of speaking with Charlie and telling him that I wanted to pursue politics and public service at a young age,” DePew said. “And I’ll never forget what he told me. He said, ‘Do it. Don’t be afraid. They will attack you because of your age, but move forward.’ And that’s exactly what I did.”
DePew was elected mayor of Edgewater in November 2022, becoming the youngest elected official in Florida history.
A portrait of Charlie Kirk stands beside an American flag during a memorial held in his honor at UCF Rosen College on Wednesday night.
Shaelyn McClunn
Speakers said Kirk’s work would carry on through those individual experiences.
Matthew Lloyd, vice president of Turning Point USA at UCF, told attendees Kirk could no longer walk onto another college campus before adding, “So we will.”
Lloyd then turned from what Kirk could no longer do to what he wanted members to do next.
“So tonight, we mourn Charlie Kirk,” Lloyd said. “But tomorrow, we continue his mission. And every day after that, we continue his mission.”
Christian faith also played a prominent role in the memorial. The event began and ended with prayers for Kirk; organizers collected prayer requests during an intermission, and several speakers discussed Kirk’s Christian faith.
Bennett connected that part of the memorial to her own experience. She discussed becoming a Christian during the years she was estranged from Kirk and Turning Point USA, and encouraged attendees to invite someone to church after the event.
“Charlie’s legacy is not one of politics, even though that’s what the world sees,” Bennett said. “Believers and Christians know his legacy is one of his courage for his faith.”
When asked what she wanted people who both agreed and disagreed with Kirk to take from the memorial, Bennett focused instead on his family.
“The biggest tragedy is not that Turning Point no longer has Charlie,” Bennett said. “It’s that his kids no longer have a father.”
Political content creator Adam Francisco, whose YouTube channel has more than 215,000 subscribers, attended Wednesday’s memorial and recalled a previous opportunity to meet Kirk that he passed up.
Francisco told The Charge he once saw Kirk at an event in Tampa and considered introducing himself. Kirk was surrounded by people, and Francisco was in a hurry, so he decided he would approach him another time.
“I looked at him, and I said to myself, ‘He’s busy, and I’m in a rush anyway, so I’ll see you next time,’” Francisco said. “And there never was a next time.”