They were five members of the United States armed services we would probably never know. Now, although we'll never meet them, they're our forever friends.
Most Chattanooga residents had lived their lives without encountering the Armed Forces Career Center in a strip mall on Lee Highway or the Naval Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center on Amnicola Highway. If we knew the latter place at all, we knew it as the fenced compound we passed on the way to the Tennessee Riverpark.
At the Amnicola Highway location, on a hot day one year ago, those five members of the armed forces died in a hail of bullets sprayed by an assassin that the Federal Bureau of Investigation now says had been radicalized. He had previously shot up the front of the Lee Highway center, wounding - fortunately - only one Marine.
The dead we committed to memory, their faces if not always their names: Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Lance Cpl. Squire "Skip" Wells, and Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, all of the Marines, and Petty Officer Randall Smith of the Navy.
Most of us will forever remember where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news - like we did for the 9-11 attacks, the Challenger explosion, the Reagan assassination attempt, the Kennedy slaying.
We remember the gut punch, the feeling it couldn't happen here, the loss of innocence. We couldn't equate the fact the shooter, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, born in Jordan but by all rights a local boy, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduate, a young man with an electrical engineering degree and a job, could be mixed up in hate rooted half a world away.
We were naive. Now, perhaps, we are worldly - a member of the too-rapidly growing list of cities that have shared our pain: New York City, Fort Hood, Boston, Paris, San Bernadino, Orlando.
But we also were uniquely Chattanooga following the horrific events. We planted flags, dropped off flowers and fashioned memorials of all sorts at the sites. We gave money for the families. We made food for members of the Chattanooga Police Department who had rushed into the gunfire. We offered a group hug by showing up at the National Cemetery burial for one of the five. We attended concerts, sculpture dedications and runs that memorialized their lives.
Today, we mark the one-year anniversary of the tragic deaths of those five men who might never have been known to us without the incident but who meant everything to their families.
Activities throughout the area, from solemn ceremonies to memorial motorcycle rides to blood drives, demonstrate our hearts won't soon let them go.
As if we might forget, though, the artistically depicted visages of the five are now painted on a 22-by-100-foot mural on the wall of the Wholesale Florist Building at 1715 McCallie Ave. We've watched artist Kevin Bate, atop white scaffolding, create the faces one by one - starting in the fall, continuing throughout the winter and finishing in the early summer. Each image completed was a painful reminder that what happened on that summer day was not a dream.
Around sundown this evening, the lights permanently illuminating the mural at night will go on. Symbolically, the men who signed up to serve their country will be watching us.
As they watch, may we be a city deserving of their sacrifice. May we believe that all lives are of sacred worth and strive to make sure our police department, our schools and our businesses do their parts to live up to that belief. May we not blame all Muslims for the actions of a few in this country and around the world. May we continue to live uniquely as Chattanooga, feeling the pain of those who mourn, reveling in an authentic patriotism and offering what we can to those less fortunate than us and in times of dire need.
Are we different than we were a year ago? Probably. But we can't go back, and we can't live in fear.
Our only choice is to go boldly into the future, grateful for the sacrifice of those we hardly knew (but now feel like we do), and willing to work for a world that turns the kind of hate felt that day into love.