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One year ago this week, Turning Point USA founder and conservative icon Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University.
As the anniversary approaches, his closest allies are still grappling with the tragedy after losing their friend and leader in the prime of his life.
Andrew Kolvet, the spokesman for Turning Point USA and a close friend of Kirk’s, called the past year “the most challenging year of my life.”
“Not only did we live through the tragedy of losing Charlie in such a public, horrific way, but we’ve had to navigate the months afterwards, and try and pick up the pieces and keep charging forward, because I think there would have been a temptation for anybody to just be mired in grief and go into the fetal position after something like that happened. But we also understood that Charlie meant so much to so many people that we had to push forward and keep going,” Kolvet told Fox News Digital.
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It has been nearly one year since the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Kolvet, who first met Kirk in 2017 and began working for him in 2018, said he didn’t expect a cottage industry of conspiracy theories to emerge from Kirk’s murder, but he said he also didn’t expect that stories from all over the country from people whose lives Kirk impacted would continue flooding in nearly a year later.
Kolvet recounted the story of an Indiana student and high school Turning Point chapter president who clashed with a mother while handing out bracelets.
“And she was like, ‘You know, Charlie taught me how to stand up for myself and I won’t back down. And I’m here because I was inspired to get involved by Charlie, his life and his death, and I won’t back down,” Kolvet said.
He continued, “And to see that kind of grit, like a happy warrior from our students and to see their enthusiasm and their willingness to stay engaged, stay fighting — all of those things have been truly remarkable for me to witness and not just witness from afar, hear anecdotes, but to hear their stories personally, for them to come up to me and tell me about it, come on the show and tell us about it has been really amazing.”
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Turning Point USA spokesman Andrew Kolvet reflects on the challenging year he has had following the assassination of the group’s founder Charlie Kirk. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)
Kolvet credited Turning Point USA’s continued success over the past year to Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, who was appointed CEO of the group following his assassination, a succession plan Kolvet said Charlie had previously expressed in the event of his untimely death.
“The fact that she stepped into that very difficult role in the time and the way and the manner in which she did was so incredibly important, because if you don’t know the inner workings of Turning Point, you don’t know the way that it’s set up, and you don’t know all the individual personalities, I’m of the opinion that had she not stepped in when she did and how she did, that you could have seen the unraveling of Turning Point completely,” Kolvet said.
“She was the one person that could step into that place and have the respect, the love, and the appreciation from all the different parts of the organization and organizations that could have brought everybody together and realized, hey, we’re going to fight together, we’re going to be together, we’re going to rally around each other and make sure Charlie’s mission continues to march forward. And she was uniquely the only one, I believe, that could’ve done that.”
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Erika Kirk, who took over as CEO of Turning Point USA after her husband’s murder last year. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
He touted an “almost 200% growth” in Club American chapters in high schools with over 3,500 across the country and over 1,500 Turning Point college chapters, adding that when he was alive Charlie Kirk believed 1,000 would be the max.
Kolvet also pointed to the spike in church partnerships, going from 4,000 to 12,000.
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“Erica’s done an incredible job driving success, being a visionary leader, stepping into the biggest shoes you can imagine… Charlie was a thousand percent right for entrusting her with this monumental task should something happen to him… And she stepped into an unimaginable situation and [did] an incredible job with that,” Kolvet added.