(NBC NEWS) The stories of the victims of Sunday's massacre in Las Vegas are as diverse as America itself, 59 people, all with friends and families and jobs and dreams.
Those who knew them are choosing to remember not how they left this world, but what they did in their all-too-short time in it.
People like Sonny Melton of Tennessee, who died while making sure his wife Heather lived.
"He loved her," says Easton Melton. "I think it was just second nature to him to do something like that."
Amidst the grief there are also stories of bravery, love and selflessness.
Paramedic Dawn-Marie Gray from Oregon and her husband, Kevin, treated wounded victims and sent them off to the hospital as bullets rained down.
"When we came out it was horrific, a field of bodies," she says.
The survivors call them heroes.
"I couldn't believe the human spirit and the kindness that everybody was helping everybody," says survivor Aaron Jenkins.
Read more: http://nbcnews.to/2xdHP3d
