Brandon Wolf crouched in the corner of the nightclub bathroom for what felt like forever as gunshots rang out. Finally, he and several others decided to run, arms linked, toward the glowing light coming from the crack of an emergency exit door. They escaped.
Read more Celebrating Father’s Day around Orlando: Beer, bowling, bourbon, more
“I’ll never forget the looks on people’s faces, and the fog machine smoke still billowing and the music still radiating on the floor while gunshots were going off,” Wolf said.
Wolf survived but two friends he’d gone to the club with, Juan Ramon Guerrero and Christopher Andrew Leinonen, perished in the gunfire.
Hours later Wolf was able to reach Juan’s sister.
“She kept saying, ‘Please tell me he wasn’t there’,” Wolf said. “I remember trying so hard not to break down, there was a lump in my throat, and finally the only thing I could say to her was, ‘I’m so sorry’,” he said.
“I think that was the first moment I learned what heartbreak is,” Wolf said. “Time feels like it stood still. I remember sitting on the couch for hours and hours just staring at the floor.”
Pulse was a special place, Wolf said, where as a gay man he felt he could fully be himself.
“Pulse was probably the first place I ever held hands with someone that I had a crush on without looking over my shoulder,” Wolf said. “I think a lot of people come to Orlando to find better for themselves and I was one of those. Pulse really felt like the physical embodiment of that community that I was looking for.”
Devastated by the loss of Leinonen, his best friend, and so many others, Wolf has said he decided to channel his anger and anguish into advocacy, fighting for LGBTQ rights and gun control.
Read more Coyotes are coming: Novelist explores new threats to America’s suburbs
This month, he returns to Florida to work again for Equality Florida, the LGBTQ rights group where he began that work soon after the shooting.
One of the many calls he made after the shooting was to his father, who lived thousands of miles away in Oregon. His father, Wolf’s remaining parent after his mother passed away when he was young, had struggled with Wolf’s sexuality. It drove them apart, he said.
But over the last 10 years, Pulse has helped that relationship heal.
“My dad has taken a long time to come to understand me,” Wolf said. “What he realized, in the wake of Pulse, is that bad things were still going to happen, he had just ensured that he would not be my first phone call and that really broke his heart.”
During his first visit to Orlando after the shooting, Wolf’s father asked to go to Pulse and pay his respects, he said. The experience opened up new avenues to talk, Wolf said.
“It’s one of the things that’s come out of the last 10 years that’s been meaningful to me,” Wolf said. “Healing from that tragedy together has allowed my dad and I to get closer.”
But the massacre weighs on him.
“After that day, life has never been the same,” Wolf said. “There is no moment where there’s a bow on it, and it’s tidy, and you write the end and close the book. It’s just not that easy.”
Read more Ask a real estate pro: How can we still close home sale after low appraisal?