The world knows how her husband died. Now Helen Comperatore is on a mission to make sure everyone knows that his final act of selfless bravery, now immortalized, reflected the way he lived.

Quiet heroism, compassion, and “giving his all” defined Corey Comperatore, his wife said, long before he became famous for protecting her and their two daughters from gunfire at a rally for President Donald Trump in Butler Township, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

Ahead of the anniversary of the shooting that Trump and two other wounded people miraculously survived, Helen Comperatore and others talked to The Epoch Times about the impact of her husband’s death and efforts to honor his life.

The former fire chief’s widow also described a fateful choice that he made on July 13, 2024—a date now etched in U.S. history.

Hours before the shots rang out at the Butler Farm Show grounds, she recalled, “Some guy just randomly came up to me and said, ‘Would you guys like to go sit in VIP seating?’”

Her husband responded: “Absolutely. Let’s go.”

As a result, “We were the first people in the bleachers,” Helen Comperatore said.

“We had first pick of those seats—and that’s where Corey chose to sit.”

That location unwittingly put the Comperatores between rooftop gunman Thomas Crooks, 20, and Trump, his intended target.

Crooks’s bullets “went right directly past us,” Helen Comperatore said. “One went right past my cheek. Another one went right over my head.”

And one struck her 50-year-old husband—the lone fatality among a crowd of many thousands.

“It was the saddest, most traumatic day of my life,” Helen Comperatore, 51, said, mourning the loss of her high school sweetheart, to whom she had been married for nearly 29 years.

Yet she believes that her husband’s death—at his first Trump rally—was part of “God’s plan.”

“The way things went down that day ... God knew that this was going to happen, and it was the way it was supposed to be,” she said, adding that she and her husband shared a strong Christian faith.

Before officers returned fire and fatally shot Crooks, some of the gunman’s bullets traveled to the opposite set of bleachers, striking two other rallygoers. 

David Dutch, 58, and James Copenhaver, 75, told Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV earlier this week that they are still suffering from their injuries. And they, like Corey Comperatore, had switched to the seats where gunfire hit them.

The two injured men, the Comperatore family, and other rally attendees bonded over their shared trauma. “We go out to dinner together. We’re very close. We pray together. We all pray for Corey all the time. ... We’ve just become a family,” Helen Comperatore said.

Days after the shooting, Trump, still wearing a bandage over the wound to his right ear, paid tribute to Corey Comperatore at the Republican National Convention. Trump commended him for acting “as a human shield” to protect his loved ones.

As Trump spoke, Corey Comperatore’s firefighter turnout gear was displayed onstage; Trump walked over and kissed his fire helmet. That hit home for the firefighter’s family in an unexpected way.

“All day at the rally, my husband kept saying, ‘He’s gonna call me up on stage.' ... He was just joking, obviously,” Helen Comperatore told Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV about a month after the shooting.

That’s why seeing her husband’s firefighting gear onstage with Trump at the convention made the family react, she said. “We were all like: Here’s his moment—he’s up on stage,” she said.

Although steeped in unrelenting grief, the Comperatores said they take heart knowing that the death of their hero touched people locally, nationally, and even internationally.

“This community, this entire world, has been amazing,” Helen Comperatore said. “I have heard from people all over the world.”

Daughters Kaylee Comperatore, 25, and Allyson Comperatore, 28, are helping their mother and other supporters organize a movie screening, parade, memorial motorcycle ride, and country concert—all in the Butler area—just before the anniversary of the shooting.

The events will heighten awareness of the person their father was, while also raising funds that the nonprofit Corey Comperatore Foundation will channel to churches and emergency responders—community organizations that he served.

“The last time a lot of people saw Corey, they saw him in a very tragic way—and I don’t want people to remember him like that,” Helen Comperatore said. “I want people to celebrate Corey and remember him for the man that he was, and Corey was a good man.”

His life was “a reflection of his faith,” his obituary stated, calling him “a man of God who loved Jesus with every fiber of his being.” Christian principles guided his actions, and “he inspired those around him to live with purpose and grace,” it stated.

Besides working as an engineer at a plastics company and serving 10 years in the Army Reserves, he volunteered 34 years as a firefighter in Butler County’s Buffalo Township, ascending to chief in the early 2000s.

Filling those roles while also being a father and husband, “he had it all, representing who we are” as a community, Butler County Commission Chair Leslie Osche told The Epoch Times. “So I think people here remember him as much for that as they do for what happened.”

—Janice Hisle

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