Caitlin Hammon Moore says she kept her head down that cathartic Saturday evening 365 days ago, careful not to make eye contact with any of the other 6,142 shaken souls standing with her inside Finley Stadium.
The singer of the national anthem that July 18, 2015, night in the final minutes before the Chattanooga Football Club would take the pitch in an eventual playoff win over Miami, Moore was more than a little concerned that her voice might crack if she looked into the eyes of a single person - or worse, glimpsed the American flag.
And her voice needed to do anything but crack that night. It needed to be strong. Chattanooga strong, the terrorist murders of our Fallen Five servicemen only two days old.
"It was a little hard to sing," she said later that evening. "I definitely wasn't looking at the flag."
Mark WiedmerNearly a year later, Moore again scheduled to sing the anthem prior to Saturday's CFC playoff game against Houston's Dutch Lions, she said Friday, "It was one of those times you just put your head down and got through it, just wanting to remember and respect the lives that were lost."
She soon added, "The stadium seemed quieter that night, very reverent."
There are moments you never forget. Anyone and everyone inside Finley 365 days ago will forever remember not only Moore's stirring delivery of the anthem but also that collective reverence for the Fallen Five: Marines Lance Cpl. Squire "Skip" Wells, Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Sgt. Carson Holmquist and Staff Sgt. David Wyatt and Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith.
"Most emotional sporting event I've ever been to," said longtime WGOW program director Bill Lockhart. "We were all bound together by grief and resolve. The raw emotion was washing over everybody like the biggest wave you ever felt at the beach. You felt this incredible sense of community. It made you want to hug your neighbor."
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Said Bridget Lane: "There was a definite and profound sense of sadness and loss, but there was also a feeling of unity, of wanting to be there together. There were a lot of tears during the national anthem."
For the first 24 hours after the July 16 attacks, there wasn't even a certainty that the game would be played.
Said the CFC's Bill Nuttall, who once flattened the great Pele in a NASL game: "We were going back and forth. Should we have the game? Should we not have the game? We decided to play because you don't want the world to stop because of one person's insanity."
One person's insanity. We saw it again Thursday in Nice, France. A nut job turned a refrigerator truck into a weapon of mass destruction. It was Orlando, Charleston, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino and Chattanooga - to name but five - all over again.
Said one witness to the Nice atrocity as she looked into an NBC camera after watching the horror unfold: "This is not a part of the human experience, or it shouldn't be."
But it is. More and more. Both here and around the world, each fresh wound to our psyches and souls also bringing a fresh opportunity to prove love still conquers hate when given a chance.
"We decided to sell those 'Chattanooga Strong' T-shirts, with all the proceeds going to the families of the victims," Nuttall recalled. "We had no idea what to expect. Would people come? Would they want the shirts?"
They sold out in 15 minutes. There were lines snaking around the stadium when the gates opened. The CFC wound up taking orders on slips of papers as well as setting up an online shop by the close of the weekend.
"We were unbelievably overwhelmed by all those people wanting to buy those shirts," Nuttall said. "We were just a small piece of this city's support for those families, but those shirts said a lot about this community."
The support from so many corners - U.S. Senator Bob Corker's and Peyton Manning's Chattanooga Heroes Fund, the online auction from the jerseys worn by the U.S. Women's World Cup champion soccer team during its exhibition win here, the #Noogastrong T-shirt sales, the benefit concert that brought Chattanooga native Samuel L. Jackson back to town - has raised far more than $1 million for the familes of the Fallen Five.
Saturday night's game added to that, what with a special-edition "#Noogastrong" T-shirt selling for $20, all of the proceeds going to the 7-16 Freedom Fund, which provides post-secondary scholarships and pays expenses for the families of those affected.
Said Moore on Friday, the day after Nice and the day before she would again sing our national anthem before a CFC playoff game: "It can seem like all this horrible stuff is happening so far away; then you realize, 'No, it happened to our town, too.'"
So she'll keep delivering the anthem whenever asked, a trained opera singer sharing her gifts, believing strongly - and rightly - that "the arts and music are so important, they give us a second to reflect, to bring hope."
And after the grim videos from Nice, we need hope. Now more than ever. Here. There. Everywhere.
But we probably also need to embrace a discouraging dose of reality.
As Bridget Lane said, "A year later we still mourn the loss of life and we pray for the families. We know that we don't live in a bubble, and if it can happen here it can happen anywhere."
Said Diana Lockhart as she recalled both our Fallen Five and the CFC game two days later: "We are not Mayberry anymore."
Not here. Not anywhere.
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com