The Whole World Was Watching: Living in the Light of Matthew Shepard

On the evening of Thursday, October 8, 1998, 20-year-old Romaine Patterson received a phone call that her best friend, Matthew Shepard, had been beaten and left hanging on a split-rail fence outside Laramie, Wyo. Patterson was then thrust into the center of the worldwide media frenzy that descended on Laramie, and she came face-to-face with homophobic backlash when Baptist minister Fred Phelps and his followers picketed Shepard's funeral with signs reading Matt in Hell.
Upon learning of Phelps's plan to take his ministry of hate to support Shepard's killers at their trial, Patterson went into action. Who can forget the image of Patterson and her friends donning seven-foot angel wings so they could encircle Phelps and his gang, leaving the picketers silent and invisible? From that moment forward, Patterson has become a spokesperson for tolerance, acceptance, and nonviolence around the globe, whether as a founder of Angel Action, as a consultant for The Laramie Project (the award-winning play that has been produced hundreds of times and became an acclaimed Showtime film starring Christina Ricci as Patterson), or as cohost of the successful Sirius Satellite Radio show Derek & Romaine.
In one of their last conversations, Shepard told Patterson that he wanted to spend his life helping people realize that they, as individuals, could make a difference in the world. This book is Romaine Patterson's journey to realizing the truth of that statement.