Deaths mourned at Coeur d'Alene Transgender Day of Remembrance ceremony
The Transgender Day of Remembrance was marked Thursday by the reading of names of the individuals lost in the last year at an event held by North Idaho Pride Alliance (NIPA) at the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d'Alene.
CAROLYN BOSTICK/Press
COEUR d’ALENE — For more than a decade, Transgender Day of Remembrance has been marked in Coeur d’Alene by reading the names of those lost in the previous year.
“Today, we remember 55 people across the country,” Sarah Lynch, executive director of the North Idaho Pride Alliance said Thursday at the Human Rights Education Institute.
To a room with about 60 people, Lynch spoke of the statistics of trans people who had died since November 2024.
About 45% of the deaths were ruled homicides and 18 of the homicides resulted from gun violence. More than 30% died by suicide, including five youth.
The annual memorial started in 1999 to honor Rita Hester, killed in 1998 in Allston, Mass., and Chanelle Pickett, killed Nov. 20,1995, in Watertown, Mass.
The first remembrance was held Nov. 20 in order to acknowledge the right for trans people to simply exist, memorialize the names of those lost and honor them. Only a decade later, ceremonies were held in more than 185 cities across 20 countries.
The ceremony also hosted a talk by Maeve Griffith, a former U.S. Air Force officer and retired Spokane fire captain.
“For so many years we’ve been doing this, observing and mourning quietly the deaths of trans people,” Griffith said.
Compared to getting an education, working difficult jobs and even the parental responsibilities of raising a family, Griffith said that nothing compared to the day where the truth drowned out everything else until she spoke it aloud.
“The hardest thing I’ve ever done was to come out,” Griffith said. “It’s something I knew since I was a small child that I thought would go away but never did.”
One day, Griffith began to speak the truth she knew out loud to friends, to family and eventually to the community.
“This is not an uncommon story. Every day, you get up and try to do the best you can with what God gave you,” Griffith said.
Being a visible trans person in the community is something she feels a responsibility to others to uphold.
Griffith said she will continue to tell the truth out of honor as she has tried to do throughout her life.
“When people who love their country, love God, love decency and love truth see us, they know that we are their allies,” Griffith said.