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.