Mourning and celebration
Thousands attend service held two decades after his murder
Dennis and Judy Shepard walk behind the Rev. Gene Robinson while he carries their son Matthew’s ashes at the conclusion of a service Friday at Washington National Cathedral, where Matthew’s ashes were interred. Matthew Shepard’s slaying in 1998 in Wyoming became a rallying cry in the gay-rights movement.
WASHINGTON — Bells chimed softly, a flute slowly played “Morning Has Broken” and thousands filled the soaring nave of the Washington National Cathedral for the interment service of Matthew Shepard, the young man whose murder 20 years ago horrified the nation and became a milestone in the fight for gay rights.
The poignant service was at once a funeral and a celebration of life, a moment of closure for Shepard’s loved ones and of remembrance for all those moved by the murder of Shepard, who was pistol-whipped and left for dead on a remote Wyoming prairie.
Presiding over the worship service at the second-largest cathedral in the country, in front of a crowd of about 2,000 people, was Bishop Gene Robinson, whose elevation in the early 2000s as the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church marked another huge — and controversial — landmark in the push for gay and transgender equality.
In his homily, Robinson shared an anecdote from the first police officer who arrived at the site of Shepard’s attack, a remote fence to which his battered body was lashed. The policeman recalled encountering a deer lying beside Shepard’s body. When she approached, Robinson said, the animal looked straight into her eyes before bounding up and running away.
“What she said was: ‘That was the good Lord, no doubt in my mind.’ And there’s no doubt in my mind either. God has always loved Matt,” Robinson said.
Rippling through the Cathedral at times was the crackling energy of a political rally, with Robinson urging the crowd not to simply commemorate Shepard but to train their eyes on continued discrimination against sexual minorities, especially transgender people, who he called a “target” right now.
This week reports surfaced that President Donald Trump’s administration is “seriously” considering changing the way it treats transgender people under the law — a fresh and direct aim at transgender rights.
“There are forces who would erase them from America,” Robinson said. Twice he urged attendees to “go vote.”
The crowd gave Robinson a long standing ovation as he closed his homily, choking back tears.
“There are three things I’d say to Matt: ‘Gently rest in this place. You are safe now. And Matt, welcome home.’ Amen.”
Earlier in the service, Matthew Shepard’s father, Dennis Shepard, thanked those in the Cathedral, and the scores of others watching the livestreamed service online, for “helping us take Matt home.”
“It is so important we now have a home for Matt,” Shepard, 69, said. “A home that others can visit. A home that is safe from haters.”
The father recalled his son’s love for the Episcopal church, growing up in Sunday School and as an acolyte in their church at home in Wyoming.
“Matt was blind, just like this beautiful house of worship,” Dennis Shepard said. “He did not see skin color. He did not see religion. He did not see sex orientation. All he saw was a chance to have another friend.”
For Shepard’s family and friends, the service was a celebration of his life that wasn’t possible at the tumultuous time of his 1998 murder, when anti-gay protesters screamed at funeral-goers. Tensions were so fierce at his funeral that his father wore a bullet-resistant vest under his blue suit.
For two decades, Shepard’s parents kept their son’s ashes near their home in Casper, Wyo. They feared laying him to rest in a public place, fearing it would draw attention from “people who hated what Matt represented,” his mother, Judy Shepard, recalled in an interview earlier this week. When a representative from the Smithsonian suggested the Cathedral earlier this year, it struck the couple as the perfect fit, Judy Shepard said.
“We were waiting to find the right solution, and the right solution appeared,” she said.
Even as advocates hope Shepard’s interment will be a catalyst for Americans to focus on civil rights, the service was for those who knew him a grand, final goodbye.
It included a song called “Ordinary Boy” compiled with snippets from journal entries written by someone who barely made it out of childhood. The service noted his supportive, loving family and church. Shepard also struggled with drugs and clinical depression after being raped in Morocco a few years before he was killed.
“I want my life to be happy and I want to be clearer about things. I want to feel good. I love Wyoming very much. I love theatre. I love good friends. I love succeeding,” go the song’s lyrics, which were sung by a series of singers at the service’s close as the cavernous sanctuary began to empty into the workday. “Such an ordinary boy living ordinary days, in an ordinary life so worth living.”