Charlie Kirk was 18 when he met Teton County’s Foster Friess.
The major Republican donor later reported back to his wife, Lynn, that he had met a “wise young man who wanted to save America,” she said in a statement emailed to KHOL. “Foster knew then that Charlie would move the culture and change history … and he did!”
Lynn wrote on her website that Foster and their son, Steve, met Kirk in 2011 and Foster quickly wrote a check to help start Turning Point USA, a nonprofit that leads the conservative movement among young people in high schools and on campuses of colleges and universities. Foster later told a crowd in Jackson that it was Kirk’s first $10,000 check, according to the Jackson Hole News&Guide.
The families remained close, according to former Teton County GOP Chair Mary Martin. Kirk later bought Foster’s desk, Martin said, a symbol of the pair’s mutual respect.
Kirk became a sought-after speaker. He emceed a dinner at the 2020 Wyoming Republican Party convention. He returned to Jackson in 2023 as the keynote for the local GOP fundraiser at Teton Village’s Four Seasons.
“He had such a sincere willingness to be able to encourage conservatives to speak their truth,” Martin said.
Kirk was 31 when he was fatally shot in Utah on Sept. 10, 2025, while speaking at Utah Valley University. As of Thursday morning, the shooter is still at-large and a manhunt is underway.
Kirk made his name diving headfirst into political tension and roiling the left. Reuters reports that Kirk had a history of making anti-Islamic statements. NPR reports Kirk spread falsehoods about the “2020 election, vaccines, transgender people and demographic change.”
Turning Point USA had its fingerprints in Jackson’s nonpartisan town council race in 2020.
Turning Point Action, Turning Point USA’s 501(c)(4) political action group, paid for mailers supporting Jim Rooks, Michael Kudar and Devon Viehman for town council. Other mailers attacked then-mayor Pete Muldoon and then-vice-mayor Hailey Morton Levinson. Rooks, Kudar and Viehman all said at the time they were surprised to be the subject of Turning Point Action’s support.
Some Jacksonites also received robocalls and texts from Turning Point Action in 2020 that erroneously stated the Town Council was discussing defunding the police department, according to the News&Guide. The negative mailers included some false statements about town council actions to raise their own pay. The messaging had the same firebrand style Kirk spearheaded nationwide.
Martin remembers the free speech advocate was heckled at Teton County GOP fundraiser two years ago. He handled it well, she said.
“He demonstrated [in] a profoundly grace-filled way how we can maintain our composure and our attitude and speak truth into an attack in a way that respected everybody,” she said.
Just hours after news broke of the assassination, a small crowd gathered for a vigil in Jackson.
Julien Hass, secretary for the Teton County Democratic Party, was among the first to arrive.
“It’s tragic and terrible,” Hass said. “Murdering someone doesn’t make an idea go away.”
Jacksonite Bea Jones organized the vigil. The singer-songwriter draped an American flag over her music stand before a crowd of about a dozen, including some tourists and several Teton County GOP leaders.
The practiced performer was visibly anxious as she spoke about Kirk while taking her guitar out of its case. While not an overtly political person herself, Jones said she was heartbroken to hear the news about Kirk’s killing and felt she had to do something.
Before she started to sing, she gave a short speech under the antler arches.
“I wanted to just come out here and gather us today and to stand in love,” she said. “I think all of us here are bound by love, and I think that means something.”
Politicians across the aisle rushed to condemn the violence this week. That included Wyoming Democrats.
“Any form of violence is an abhorrent stain on our practice of democracy. America was and is built on the idea that we are free to express our positions on policy and politics, without fear of violence,” Wyoming Democratic Party Chair Lucas Fralick said in a statement.
This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Julien Hass’ first name. — Ed.
