Honoring Kelly Loving and Daniel Aston on Transgender Day of Remembrance
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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Daniel Aston dreamed of becoming a poet.
Kelly Loving, an aspiring professional makeup artist, had left behind her homes in Mississippi and Tennessee to celebrate her birthday in Colorado.
Aston worked as a bartender at Club Q, serving up cheap liquor shots and plastic cupped cocktails, right up until the moment gunfire erupted on Nov. 19, 2022. Loving was shot and killed the same night, police found her body shielding others who survived the attack.
Loving and Aston, the only openly transgender people killed in the attack were among the five lives lost in the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, and were memorialized at anniversary gatherings this week.
As the winning Trump 2024 campaign centered much of its messaging around anti-trans rhetoric, and calls to LGBTQ+ crisis lines have increased, Club Q victims’ families have ramped up their outspoken support for the transgender community.
Survivors and family members of Club Q victims have filed two lawsuits against the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, the El Paso County Board of Commissioners, Club Q, the bar’s owner Matthew Haynes as well as Anderson Lee Aldrich, the convicted shooter who is currently serving a life sentence for the murders.
The shooting took place the night before Transgender Day of Remembrance. Loving and Aston’s friends and family members said the two were proud of their identities and spent much of their lives trying to help others.
As a young child, Daniel Aston befriended his next-door neighbor, who was disabled. He stood up for the neighbor as others bullied him at school.
“He always stuck up for the underdog,” said Sabrina Aston, Daniel’s mother.
The Aston family spent Daniel’s childhood in Tulsa before moving to Colorado Springs when he was 21. He followed the family out two years later.
Life in Oklahoma was difficult for Daniel Aston, who told his parents he was a boy when he was little. He always wanted to be male characters for Halloween and wore boy clothes to school.
When he was older, his peers bullied him. He asked Sabrina Aston to buy him dresses and wear makeup. He experienced depression before leaving for college at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, where he studied English.
“Once he got to college, he became Mr. Popular. He was the president of the LGBTQ club and he made all of these friends that were like him,” Sabrina Aston recalled.
He began taking testosterone when he was 20. Sabrina saw an immediate shift in the way his eyes lit up and his smile grew bigger as he watched the image in the mirror match the one he held for himself.
He died at 28.
“He was a boy ever since he was little,” Sabrina Aston said. “But in the months and years that he was transitioning, the world got to see who he really was.”
Daniel Aston’s cousin, Dallas Dutka, took him to his first gay bar for his 21st birthday. Dutka remembers the smile on his face as he stepped into an environment where he didn’t feel like a minority.
“Something just clicked,” Dutka said.
More than Tennessee and Mississippi
Kelly Loving dreamed bigger than Batesville, Mississippi, her hometown of about 7,000 people. She used to steal Barbie dolls from her two older sisters and dress them up and dreamed of becoming a professional makeup artist, specifically for drag queens and transgender women.
“We knew something was different about her from the time she was about 5 or 6,” said her sister, Tiffany Loving. “But in Mississippi, that’s just not acceptable.”
Tiffany Loving said Kelly Loving faced severe bullying in Mississippi, so the family moved north to Memphis, Tennessee, a bigger city with more progressive politics. But Tiffany Loving said the same Southern, Christian atmosphere largely remained, and her sister was bullied there, too.
Some of the people in Kelly Loving’s new home also struggled to accept her, Tiffany Loving said.
But as Kelly Loving got older, she began befriending other transgender women in her life. She called them her daughters, a tradition among transgender women and drag performers, which originated in New York City ballroom culture.
“In Memphis, the trans women were a close group and she helped them,” Tiffany Loving said. “She would do their hair and makeup and get them to doctors to get hormones and surgeries.”
Kelly Loving loved to travel the country, first in her old Chevy sedan, then in her Volkswagen Bug, her dream car that was stolen months after she got it.
She took her trans sisters and daughters to New York City, Los Angeles and other bigger, queerer cities.
“A girl who unapologetically lived her truth and was ready to take on the world,” said Janelle Kayla Grays, Kelly Loving’s trans mother who likewise guided Loving.
Kylie Vaughn, a Loving family friend, said Kelly sent whatever extra money she had to other friends and family members. She was always eager to help others.
“She would randomly send the cousins money,” Vaughn said. “She was just a beautiful soul.”
Vaughn said Loving loved “beautiful places and beautiful people.” She adored Tennessee’s dense forests and mountains, as well as the flashy nightlife of its larger cities. She loved sparkly dresses and lavish makeup.
“Miami was her favorite place because of all of the beautiful people there,” Vaughn said. “She loved beautiful people.”
‘A soft, total nerd’
Wyatt Kent knew Daniel Aston was the one the moment the two locked eyes for the first time at Club Q in 2019.
Daniel Aston was behind the bar while Kent took center stage as a drag queen, performing under the name Potted Plant.
After Potted Plant made their debut at the nightclub, Daniel Aston showed them to their dressing room. The two spent the rest of the night giggling and chatting, largely consumed by each other and too distracted for the world around them.
“We would flirt back and forth at the bar as a drag queen does,” Kent said. “But flirting with Daniel was different because he was different. It actually meant something.”
The two were friends for years while they dated other people and admired each other at the club, where Kent began performing four times a week. The two went on their first real date July 2022 — five months before the shooting, in which Kent was also shot.
Kent and Daniel Aston stayed up late watching Star Wars and Star Trek, hiking around the Pike National Forest and writing letters and poetry to each other. The two had plans to get engaged.
“He was a huge nerd,” Kent said. Daniel Aston collected VHS tapes and Star Wars toys.
“He was also an incredible poet,” Kent said.
Daniel Aston wrote poems about Kent, his life and his dreams for the future. “Leaves of Grass,” by Walt Whitman, was his favorite book. His mother keeps his marked up copy treasured in her home.
“He contained so many multitudes,” Kent said. “He was gentle, he was kind, he was patient, he was funny, he would challenge you.”
Bartending was not Daniel Aston’s lifelong dream. He hoped to go back to school and study English, his mother said. But bartending was a focal point of his life before he died.
“He loved whiskey. He would drink it straight from the bottle,” Kent said. “He loved his libations and he also loved to make libations for other people.”
Beacons of hope among grief
Daniel Aston and Kelly Loving’s friends and family members recounted how their family members were on the forefront of fights for transgender rights.
While working as a server at a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma, Daniel Aston convinced the restaurant’s owner to open a one-stall gender-neutral bathroom.
“That’s who Daniel was,” Sabrina Aston said. “He knew it would’ve helped others, so he did it.”
Daniel Aston’s father, Jeff Aston, said accepting Daniel Aston as his son took time.
“I’m from a different generation,” Jeff Aston said. “So it took me a while to get the pronouns right and stop using his birth name, but once I did, it was no big deal.”
Daniel Aston was Jeff Aston’s son. Jeff Aston always knew it, even though the logistics took time to click.
Kent and Daniel Aston’s friends remember him as an inspiring man. Kent said he’s left a legacy to the Colorado Springs queer community, which he was a staple of.
At services in Colorado Springs and Tulsa, hundreds attended and waited in long lines to share Aston’s poetry, their favorite memories with him or qualities they’ll remember about him.
“He would be the beacon of hope that he's become and he would be such a great human to lean on during all of this,” Kent said of Daniel Aston. “He was and always will be a fierce protector of the transgender community.”
Kelly Loving’s trans mother said her legacy will live on for trans women in Colorado, Tennessee and all the places she touched.
“She would help so many of her sisters and friends and even though she's gone, she will help trans women for many years to come,” Kayla Grays said.
Tiffany, her partner and close friends of the family held a birthday memorial on Friday for Kelly. The celebration included red velvet cake with cheesecake frosting, Jose Cuervo tequila and a discussion about the future of trans rights, which attendees worried will be attacked during the Trump presidency.
Tiffany knows Kelly Loving would’ve stood alongside her trans siblings, with slices of cheesecake, shots of tequila and a notepad to draw out plans of action to protect their community.
Kelly Loving would’ve met the moment, Tiffany Loving noted. She always did.