El Paso is mourning, but in its grief it has also not forgotten its humanity. Hundreds stood in line on Friday to attend the service of Margie Reckard, one of the 22 killed in the white supremacist attack that targeted the Latino community earlier this month. With no other living family of his own, her widower, Antonio Basco, decided to open her service to the public. “The response was unimaginable,” The New York Times reported.
The mourners waiting in line were “mostly Hispanic group, young and old, dressed in suits and dresses, blue jeans and work shirts, zoot suits, motorcycle club colors, and military dress uniforms,” The Washington Post reported. They may have been strangers, but they wanted to embrace Basco and let him know he wasn’t alone. "Never had so much love in my life," he told NPR.
“The funeral home received about 10,000 messages and tributes, and more than 900 floral arrangements,” The Times continues. “They sat along the front of the chapel, below the stained-glass windows, on every table in the foyer, in the fellowship hall and on the staircase. They were sent from across America. New Hampshire. Oregon. Kentucky.”
The support astounded more than just Basco. “I’ve been in the government for 25 years,” said Daniel Ramos, assistant special agent in charge of the El Paso FBI office, “and I’ve been in a lot of investigations that involve mass shootings and mass casualties, and I’ve never seen the show of support like I am seeing here today.”
Margie was buried in a smaller ceremony the next day, though still attended by a large number of supporters. Like in her service the day before, she was surrounded by the flowers that were a constant for her when she was alive. “She loved any kind of flowers,” Basco said. “I could walk down the street and find flowers that had been run over a thousand times and she would think it looked like a million dollars.”
Pastor Harrison Johnson, the funeral director at Perches Funeral Homes who helped organize Margie’s services, said he’ll continue to be a support system for Basco in the time to come, and he’s thankful for it. "I'm not alone," Basco said. "I thought I wanted to be alone, but I don't want to be."