Vigil recognizes loss, helps with healing

The notes held the names of loved ones who had lost their lives to substance use, each written down by friends and family members attending the ninth Overdose Awareness Candlelight Vigil at Market Street Park Thursday evening.

Shannon Blaize read each of the more than 60 names from the notes as the crowd of over 150 slowly stood in reflection and remembrance of those lost lives. The annual event recognizes those lives, giving time to grieve and space to recognize the rippling impact of the emptiness and confusion left behind.

And through the night, there is hope for healing and for prevention of the next lost life.

Each vigil is similar; local musicians provide a backdrop for the moments as the organizers, Dubois County Advocacy for Prevention and Recovery (ARC) Council, walk everyone through the vigil. A brief talk from individuals in recovery, the acknowledgment of the names on those notes followed by a special poem, and the release of more than a hundred butterflies. Before concluding, anyone in attendance can come up and tell their own story, share their grief, seek forgiveness.

Several individuals took to the Market Street Park amphitheater stage to do so. One of the last was Will Blackwood, who decided to use the moment to offer an apology.

He outlined his role in providing drugs to the community through his own spiral back into addiction after he and his wife moved to Dubois County several years ago. “We were welcomed with open arms and in three years I had destroyed all of that,” Mr. Blackwood said.

They were arrested together and pleaded guilty to dealing and other drug-related charges.

Standing on the stage, he could see the apartment they were living in when they were arrested. He pointed it out to the crowd and said it had been hard to return to Huntingburg since then with his guilt.

Then he apologized. “I am sorry I dealt drugs in this community that accepted us. I am sorry that there are people addicted because of what I did,” he said.

He felt it was necessary. What he had done weighed on his heart.

“I hated myself for it,” Mr. Blackwood said afterward. “I just wanted to make an amends to the town. I figured that microphone was as close as I was going to get.”

For Jenna Bieker Jones, coordinator of Dubois County ARC, the growth has been humbling to watch. “It’s kind of crazy that it’s been [seven years] since then, and to just watch it grow, and us to be like, are we having the right speakers, are we doing the right things — is this what people want? And people keep showing up year after year. I think it’s astounding,” the organizer said.

Having grown up and worked in Dubois County, she said watching the community rally around recovery efforts in recent years has changed how openly the county talks about addiction. “We have people who are no longer pretending these things don’t happen here in Dubois County,” Bieker Jones said.

Organizers said the event’s traditions, including a butterfly release, give attendees a way to remember lost loved ones that feels both personal and communal. “We can remember their name, we speak, and they can have a place to remember their person, and it’s accepted, and it’s okay,” Bieker Jones said. “They’re not forgotten, and people know and want to help.”

Local law enforcement and probation officials have increasingly attended the vigil as well, something organizers said matters for a community that has historically viewed addiction primarily through a punitive lens. Jenny Lampert, the county’s Chief Probation Officer, said seeing officers attend alongside the people they supervise carries weight.

“My probation officers attended this year, and their probationers saw them — I think that buy-in is going to help that person on probation recover,” she said.

For those closest to the event, fighting stigma remains the core mission. “People who use drugs are not bad people. They’re hurt people trying to find a solution, and people really miss that,” Bieker Jones said. “Their way to kind of fill that void looks different than my way. I think this event does a good job of just accepting people where they’re at.”