A nimble writer of editorials. A columnist with a keen eye. A jack-of-all trades reporter. A kind, young sales assistant. And a dedicated community chronicler.

The five victims of a shooting on Thursday afternoon at the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis, Md., held a wide range of roles at the newspaper. The youngest was 34. The oldest was 65.

[Read our coverage of the Annapolis shooting here.]

Tom Marquardt, a former executive editor and publisher of the The Capital who came to the newspaper in the 1970s and retired in 2012, knew and worked with four of the victims and said that they all shared a dedication to the newspaper. Their decision to remain there despite the adversity it faced, he said, “says something about their love of journalism.”

“That’s what makes the tragedy all that much worse,” he said. “These are people who just stayed there and never expected that something like this would happen.”