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January 28, 2016 - Alexis Deese is crying. After staring off into
a window filled with bare trees and the Great Smoky Mountains, she
glances at the Navy ball cap on her kitchen table.
Deese will
be leaving her family and regular civilian life on Feb. 1. She only
has three more days before she leaves a place that she has grown to
love. But the tears welling up in her eyes are different. They are
not for her departure. Instead, she cries for the departed. As she
recounts what happened a little more than seven months ago in
Chattanooga, Tennessee, the consequences of that day sink in and
overwhelm her.
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January 28, 2016 - Alexis Deese outside her family's home in Sevierville, Tenn., three days before she leaves for Navy boot camp. Deese was scheduled to be in the recruiting office in Chattanooga, Tenn., during the shooting attack that took place on July 16, 2015. She missed the appointment after her mother took the car for work. Despite the attack, she joined the Navy just a few weeks later. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Timothy Walter)
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“I always feel kind of guilty. I get to sit here and talk
about how I made it out, but there are little kids that will
never get their dad to come back home,” she says.
On
July 16, 2015, Deese had an
appointment with Culinary Specialist 2nd Class Jonathan
Green at Navy Recruiting Station Chattanooga. She was
excited to join the Navy. This meeting would be her final
check-in before she went to the Military Entrance Processing
Station (MEPS) to choose her job and swear in.
As she
prepared to leave though, she realized that there was a
problem. The family car was missing. She found out that her
mother had taken it. So the 10 a.m. appointment came and
went.
Just 45 minutes later, a car did appear, but
at a different location. A man in a silver convertible with
the top down drove up to the Armed Forces Recruiting Center
off Lee Highway in Chattanooga. Then he did something no one
expected. The driver began firing shots at the building.
Bullets ripped through the front windows of the recruiting
stations and everyone dove for cover. The seat where Deese
was supposed to sit and review her paperwork was inches from
the glass.
As news came in that day, reports were
scattered. Different locations and varied details were
thrown about as the media tried to get a handle on the
attack. It was a terrifying shock to the community and
particularly to Deese when she finally heard the report that
one of the targets was a recruiting station.
Miraculously, none of the recruiters from the various
branches lost their life. But a few minutes across town at
the Navy Operational Support Center, four Marines and one
Sailor were not as fortunate.
The Chattanooga
shooting quickly became a nationwide concern. People mourned
in states hundreds of miles away. Some civilians organized
armed patrols outside recruiting stations and others just
tried to figure out exactly what had happened.
But
what about the community in Chattanooga? As Deese tells it,
the aftermath was striking.
“Right after that, you
think people would be scared and upset. But no, everyone was
positive. Everyone was together. It wasn't just an attack on
those five families. It wasn't just an attack on the
recruiter's office. It was an attack on our community. It
was an attack on Chattanooga. It wasn't just that section.
Everyone was affected,” she said.
In some ways, she
is an unlikely spokesperson for the city that until the
shooting was known more for scenic views and having one of
the fastest Internet systems in the Western Hemisphere. In
fact, most of her life was spent in Florida in places like
West Palm Beach, Inverness and Cape Coral. She had only been
in this city for a little over a year when the attack
happened.
Yet Chattanooga changed her even before
her missed appointment. When asked what she considers her
hometown, she is passionate.
“It's Chattanooga,” she
says.
The tragedy of the shooting only cemented her
love of a city and community that at first seem strange. She
recalls how she didn't understand the immediate friendliness
of strangers, who would share their life story without
prompting, even at a gas station. It was a unique culture
that she grew to love.
“I think that is what helped
everyone get through it. It was the community. I've never
seen anything like that where everyone just came together,”
she says.
She points to her phone with a picture of
the flags and trinkets that made up the impromptu memorial
outside the recruiting station in the days that followed. At
first, she didn't want to even look at it because of what it
meant. But she finally did visit and she was surprised at
what happened to her.
“I was looking at it and I was
crying. And this lady — I didn't even know her — just comes
up and hugs me and she's crying. She says, 'I see your shirt
and I'm so grateful.' And before I knew it I had three
people hugging me. And I'm like, I haven't even done
anything. I wore a shirt and people were already so
grateful.”
The shirt she wore was a simple blue shirt
with a Navy logo right above the heart. However, it meant
that she was a future Sailor.
Her recruiter wasn't
sure she would wear one. After the attack, he figured she
might change her mind.
“I thought she was going to
run away after that,” said Green, a native of Lumberton,
North Carolina. “But I called her up and she was still
motivated. She still wanted to join.”
Just a few
weeks after the attack, she raised her right hand and swore
in as one of the newest members of the U.S. Navy. It was a
choice that was recognized on Aug. 15 by the Secretary of
Defense Ash Carter during the memorial service for the
fallen service members in Chattanooga. In fact, Carter
called her out by name.
“She had been talking to
recruiters in Chattanooga before the shooting, but this
senseless violence only made her want to serve her country
more. It only strengthened her resolve to stand up against
fear and hatred,” Carter said of Deese.
Deese cried
when the secretary of defense mentioned her. In part, she
felt unworthy to be named because she could see the families
who lost so much sitting just a few feet in front of her.
Yet her resolve was strengthened.
“Everyone is
getting so mad over this stuff but they are running away
from the fire. Who is going to run into it to put it out? I
want to be that person. People need to do something. And I
believe you can. You just have to put your mind to it,” she
says.
She adds that something more than idealism
though brought her back to the Navy. It was something that
in a time of tragedy brought sanity.
“If it wasn't
for the recruiters in Chattanooga, I probably wouldn't have
gone back. They really are some of my best friends,” she
says.
A couple months after the attack, her family
moved north to Sevierville, Tennessee. It took her away from
the community of Chattanooga. So whenever she needed to
gather something from her storage unit in the city, she made
a point to stop in with cookies to see the recruiters who
helped her make sense of a terrible day and helped give her
a means to express her conviction.
Today, she sits
at her kitchen table with just three days before she finally
leaves for boot camp. She thinks about the recruiters, about
the attack and about her family. Her cat sits in the chair
next to her, seemingly unaware of what is about to happen.
And those who know her keep asking if she is nervous.
“I'm anxious. I'm more nervous about saying goodbye to
my parents than I am about actually going. I just want to
go. I've watched probably every video on YouTube about boot
camp. I could probably draw the place for you. I'm just
ready to go,” she says.
She quickly switches to
excitement as she thinks about all the opportunities that
may be around the corner.
“If I can go on a
submarine, I want to go on a submarine. Not a lot of people
can say that they are doing this, or were able to, or got
the chance or opportunities to do what I'm about to do,” she
says.
At 3:38 a.m. on Feb. 1, she is sitting on a
bus and she is nervous. She is surrounded by others on the
same journey to boot camp. She sends out a text.
“It's finally hitting me that I'm actually leaving. Saying
goodbye is so hard, but I know it'll be good eventually. I
have butterflies so bad though. I'm so excited!” she writes.
Soon she is in a different world with uniforms and
new rules. But no matter where her Navy career takes her,
she already made up her mind about Chattanooga.
“When I'm done, I'm coming back. This is where I want to end
up.”
Navy Recruiting Station Chattanooga is one of
more than 30 stations belonging to Navy Recruiting District
Nashville. More than 100,000 square miles are assigned to
NRD Nashville including counties in Tennessee, Arkansas,
northern Alabama, northern Georgia, northern Mississippi,
southern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia.
By U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Timothy Walter
Provided
through DVIDS
Copyright 2016
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