Online history exhibit honors Pulse victims.

Center’s fourth annual remembrance of mass shooting will honor each of the 49 who died

Long before Pulse was a safe space for Orlando’s LGBTQ communities, it was Lorenzo’s Pizzeria, the Yum Yum Hut and Dixie Village Motors.

The Orange County Regional History Center’s fourth annual remembrance of the mass shooting at the nightclub will this year feature an animated history of the lot at 1912 South Orange Ave. in addition to new images of objects gathered from memorial sites and tributes to the 49 people who died.

Visitors to the web page can check out a ’61 Chevy Impala hardtop and the auto dealer’s newspaper ad encouraging customers to “drive it home for…$695.” Or they can read about Orlando fast-food restaurateur Sandi McDonald’s yum-yum sauce as well as discover the other businesses, which pre-dated Pulse’s opening in 2004, and see a rainbow appear over the memorial site.

The collection, archived on pages for each of the 49 people lost to the violence, speaks eloquently through pictures in the free exhibit titled, “The Stories They Could Tell.”

Find it online at www.thehistorycenter.org/stories-they-couldtell. The exhibit is presented in both English and Spanish.

It was endorsed on Facebook by Mayra Benabe-Alvear, after she previewed the exhibit. Her daughter, Amanda Alvear, 25, was among the 49 who died at the club.

Friday at noon, the special exhibit’s chief curator, Pam Schwartz, and One Orlando registrar Jeremy Hileman will conduct an online tour in English, highlighting images and selected pieces which make up the provocative presentation. A week from Friday, Noelia Irizarry-Roman, a bi-lingual museum staffer, will conduct an online tour in Spanish.

Both guided virtual tours will be recorded and posted on The

History Center site. If interested in participating in the tours, you must pre-register.

The attack inside Pulse occurred June 12, 2016, near the end of Latin Night where the crowd included a rainbow of patrons.

Many of the victims were young, gay and Puerto Rican.

They represented the diversity of people who frequently danced at the club, about half a mile from Orlando Health’s main medical campus.

The History Center, located in Heritage Square downtown, reopened this week after it was shuttered for more than two months because of the threat of COVID-19.