A 110-feet long, 22-feet high strip of cinderblock that runs along McCallie Avenue is now a memorial to the five servicemen killed July 16, 2015 in a mass shooting in Chattanooga. On the wall, which is part of the building that houses Tennessee Wholesale Florist, muralist Kevin Bate has painted the faces of Gunnery Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Staff Sgt. David Wyatt, Sgt. Carson Holmquist, Lance Cpl. Squire K. Wells, and Logistics Specialist 2nd Class Randall Smith, killed at the Navy Operational Support Center by a lone gunman.
Bate, a Chattanooga resident, was moved to paint the portraits when he saw a photo of Holmquist’s wife, Jasmine, and son, Wyatt, holding a sign welcoming Holmquist back from deployment. “One sign said ‘We’ve waited 244 days for this moment,’ and another said, ‘Welcome home, daddy,’” Bate says.” They thought he’d be safe at home, but he wasn’t. I have a son about Wyatt’s age, so that hit me hard.”
The artist has given each of the four U.S. Marines and one sailor his own portrait on the wall. Each man is depicted in his military dress along with his name, a Purple Heart, and the American flag.
Bate wanted to individualize the portraits, so not only does the name and the flag look different in each one, but the Purple Hearts are also unique, and represent something personal about each man. For example, the portrait of Smith contains three tiny Purple Hearts – one for each of his daughters.
Bate also brushed other distinctive features and even hard-to-find secrets onto the wall. For example, Wyatt’s shirt is covered with green handprints. These are the actual handprints of Wyatt’s wife and children. “Twenty or 30 years from now, if this building is still standing, the children will be able to come here with their kids and say, ‘This is where I helped to paint a mural of your grandfather,’” Bate says.
Also, Morse code is visible at the bottom of the portrait of Wells, but Bate is tight-lipped about what it says, and about the location of the other secrets. “I encourage anyone who’s interested to come here and figure it out. I don’t want to tell people where to find things,” he says.
Some of Bate’s previous forays into faces can be seen throughout downtown Chattanooga. His portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr., is located on M.L. King Boulevard, near the building in which the local chapter of the NAACP is located; his portrayals of Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith grace the old Whole Note building on the same street; and “Faces on Frazier” is his, too.
Through these and other works, Bate became known for his large-scale portraits. But there was a time when he never wanted to paint another face again. He blames this phase on art school.
“When I was in art school, we had to do faces all the time. I’d stare at myself in my bathroom mirror and sketch my face, over and over. So I stopped doing them,” he says. “But when I got back into painting a few years ago, I tried doing them again, and I got hooked.
“Now when I’m out, people will catch me starting at them, trying to figure out the details on their faces, like why one eye is higher than the other. Or I’ll meet people who are related to each other, and I’ll notice they have the same chin.”
Bate had a different plan for the wall on which Chattanooga’s Fallen Five now reside, but he changed direction during the aftermath of the shooting. Then, with the blessing of Tennessee Wholesale Florist owner Doug Williams, he began a nearly year-long journey to completion.
“I didn’t expect it to take as long as it did,” he says. “I knew I could paint in the winter, but I didn’t anticipate the amount of rain we had. That stretched it out.”
Bate didn’t contact the families about the portraits because he didn’t want to add to their burden. Instead, he searched a variety of public sources for the best pictures. While he felt confident about his choices, he was still relieved when he met his first family member – Wells’ mother, Cathy – and she was pleased with his selection.
“She said it was a selfie,” Bate says. Speaking with Wells’ mother opened the door for Bate to obtain her feedback early in the process of painting her son’s portrait, and ultimately led to him creating the most inventive of the five portrayals, with the image of Wells overlaid with a transparent U.S. flag.
“If I had met the families earlier, I would have done more artsy stuff and less traditional portraiture,” Bate says.
While the mural of Chattanooga’s Fallen Five is the work of one person, Bate had help. He’s grateful to Wilson for agreeing to host the piece on the side of his building, and for volunteering to pay for the electricity that will power the lights that will illuminate the mural at night. Also, Lawson Electric installed the lights free of charge, Behr provided the paint, and Home Depot in Hixson gave Bate the tools he needed to do the job.
While the mural of the five service members killed on July 16, 2015 is now visible to all who travel along McCallie Avenue, the community will have the opportunity to take part in a ceremony honoring the men whose images it bears. The event will start at 9 p.m. on Saturday, July 16 on McCallie Avenue. A WTCI documentary about the making of the mural will be shown first, then, once it’s dark enough, the lights will be turned on.
Bate has already received unsolicited gratitude for doing the mural. Even as far back as last summer, a local resident gave him a soft drink as he worked to thank him for taking on the project. But Bate isn’t interested in accolades; he merely wants to help preserve the memory of the five men who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of freedom.
“I want people to see the faces of the fallen servicemen, not the face of the shooter, when they think about what happened,” he says. “They are the ones we should remember.”