A Former Charlie Kirk Staffer Honors Him With Revelations From Before Anyone Knew His Name
An assassin took Charlie Kirk from the world one year ago today.
One of his very first hires just told the story nobody else could tell.
Before the fame, Charlie Kirk made one phone call that changed a stranger's life forever.
The Rest of the Country Marked the Day Too
Trump marked the anniversary from the stage of the GOP's midterm convention, telling the crowd "a far-left extremist assassinated my great friend and conservative voice, Charlie Kirk, because Charlie Kirk spoke the truth."
Utah Valley University, where Kirk was killed during a campus Q&A, canceled classes so Turning Point USA could hold its memorial on the same ground.
The man accused of killing him, Tyler Robinson, has pleaded not guilty and is now headed toward trial on charges that could carry the death penalty.
https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2098057667499487332“>https://x.com/DailyCaller/status/2098057667499487332
Seventeen Job Openings and a Kid Who Applied to All of Them
In 2015, Thomas Hern was a 22-year-old college grad working a mayoral campaign in Jacksonville when a Bloomberg headline branded a little-known conservative organizer "This Boy Wonder."
Hern looked up Turning Point USA's website – still a .net address back then – and found seventeen job openings listed.
He applied to every single one.
He did not care which door he walked through.
He only wanted in.
A few days later, Charlie Kirk called him personally, with a staffer listening in.
Charlie Called Personally and Talked for Ninety Minutes
Their first conversation ran close to ninety minutes, covering economic theory, education policy and the crowded 2016 primary field.
Then Kirk offered him his pick of all seventeen cities.
So Hern pointed his 2006 Hyundai Sonata toward Ohio, packed in everything he owned, and made the drive with less than $2,000 to his name.
His friends thought he had lost his mind, walking away from law school prospects to chase a 20-year-old nobody in the party establishment had heard of.
Hern believed in him anyway.
That first training was held at a shuttered resort west of Chicago, where Kirk worked out of a lobby folding table stacked with colorful binders, running four days of sessions on campus organizing with the handful of staffers who had been there from the start.
The pay was almost nothing, so Hern lived on pasta and cereal because it stretched furthest, and put in sixty-hour weeks because outworking everyone else was the only way Turning Point survived.
Established Republican groups kept their distance from the upstart operation, and some quietly worked to undercut it.
Kirk and his team built the movement anyway, one campus and one conversation at a time.
The Kind of Boss Who Still Answered the Phone
In under a year and a half, Hern earned three promotions.
By 24, he was managing more than 100 staffers, briefing members of Congress and U.S. senators, and helping run an organization that had already quadrupled in size under Kirk.
He remembers pickup basketball games Kirk's side usually won, trash talk when Kirk's Cubs eliminated Hern's Indians in the 2016 World Series, and long walks through Buffalo Grove plotting the organization's next move.
Even after Hern moved on to build something of his own, Kirk never let the relationship lapse – busy as he got, he still took the call, still made time for the people who had helped build the thing from scratch.
The Firm Kirk's Example Helped Build
Back in Ohio, Hern teamed up with a former Turning Point colleague – now state Representative Tex Fischer – to launch a political and digital consulting shop.
They called it H&F Strategies, built on the same grind and the same instincts Kirk had drilled into both of them.
The firm has grown into one of Ohio's top political consulting operations, and Hern says none of it happens without the kid who showed up with a Hyundai and nothing to lose.
A Father Who Talked About Gratitude More Than Politics
Their final conversations circled back to faith more than politics.
Kirk kept returning to how grateful he was for Erika and their two kids, and how much fatherhood had remade him.
Hern still can't get past the fact that Kirk's children will end up learning who their father really was mainly secondhand, through the stories the people who loved him keep telling.
Then came September 10, 2025, the day they ended all of it.
Back to Folding Tables Instead of Algorithms
Hern's takeaway from this past year is not a strategy memo – it is something far more basic, and far harder to actually live out.
Kirk did his organizing face-to-face, in dorm rooms and on sidewalks and in the shadow of campus quads, peppering people with questions until they had no choice but to think it through.
That is the work the conservative movement has quietly let slide in an age of screens and algorithms that profit from keeping Americans at arm's length from each other.
Hern does not believe the divide is as wide as cable news and social platforms insist – neither did Kirk.
The real tribute is not a hashtag or a viral clip.
It is the plain, unglamorous thing Kirk did from day one: show up in person, say what he actually thought, and refuse to let people give up on talking to each other.
A year after Ohio State Buckeyes games and late-night planning sessions gave way to a memorial, that is still the job Charlie Kirk left unfinished.
Hern ends by praying for Erika, the two children, Kirk's parents and sister, and the whole Turning Point organization he helped build.
Sources:
- Thomas Hern, "One Year Passed, What Charlie Kirk Would Want From Us Now," The Daily Caller, September 10, 2026.
- Townhall, "Trump Made Sure to Deliver Remarks on the One-Year Anniversary of Charlie Kirk's Assassination," Townhall, September 10, 2026.
- Breitbart, "Utah Valley University Cancels Classes on One-Year Anniversary of Charlie Kirk Assassination," Breitbart, September 9, 2026.
- Fox News, "Charlie Kirk Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty Charges Formally Announced," Fox News, 2026.
