It was supposed to be a family vacation, bringing together more than a dozen relatives from Slidell and Baton Rouge to enjoy a week soaking up the sun on the Gulf of Mexico coast in Florida. It was supposed to be a celebration: of family, of a 20th wedding anniversary and of a recent wedding.

What it turned out to be, however, was a tragedy.

It began with Tuesday morning's yellow flag conditions, a threat often ignored by confident swimmers but unforgiving in the case of Slidell resident Gregory Carson, 43, and his son Dominique Chatman, 23. Both men drowned while trying to rescue family members caught in rough waters off the Gulf Coast.

A day later, a family still in shock was making funeral arrangements and mourning the loss of two men who, they say, valued family above all else.

"We were a very, very close-knit family, so we are devastated," Carson's wife, Dana, said Wednesday afternoon. "They were heroes in life and heroes in death."

The family had reserved two condos at Miramar Beach for their gathering, with a group of seven family members arriving early in the week and others planning to join them today.

Sometime midafternoon on Tuesday, amid the yellow-flag warnings, Greg Carson and Chatman noticed three family members caught in what appeared to be a rip tide, and swam out to help them, where they, too, got caught in the rough waters. They were unable to make it to shore and drowned.

Rescuers from the South Walton Fire District, responding to an emergency call about 4:20 p.m., retrieved Carson and Chatman from the waters after what Dana Carson described as "a lifetime." Reports indicate that the two men were already in cardiac arrest when they were brought to shore. Emergency responders took them to nearby Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast, where they were pronounced dead.

The three family members who were originally in trouble offshore were rescued by lifeguards and several beach-goers. None was seriously injured, though one was taken to the hospital as a precaution for stress-related conditions.

For Dana Carson, the tragedy falls on the heels of a string of joyous events in the family's lives. She and her husband had celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary earlier in the summer in Mazatlan, Mexico. The two met as undergraduates at Louisiana State University.

She said they both remained fervent fans of the LSU Tigers and the Saints, evidenced by a painted wooden LSU Tigers lawn sign in the front yard of their Slidell home. The two were also avid golfers.

Greg Carson worked as a supervisor for United Parcel Service for more than 22 years, and was an active and involved dad to the couple's three children.

"He was the rock of the family," Dana Carson said.

The Carsons adopted Chatman, a Baton Rouge native, when he was 15, and he quickly became as devoted to family as the rest of them, Dana Carson said.

Chatman's siblings, a high school sophomore and college freshman, were in Slidell attending school at the time of the accident. Chatman, Dana Carson said, would always attend their sporting events or make sure they had safe rides home at night.

"Friends would tell me, 'You are an anomaly in this day and age, how much time you spend together as a family,'ยค" Carson said.

Chatman attended Delgado Community College before Hurricane Katrina, then transferred to Southern University at New Orleans. He had two semesters left to complete his degree in business administration, and he worked as an installation manager at the Best Buy store on Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Kenner.

Angela Chatman married Chatman, her high school sweetheart, on Aug. 4. The couple had decided to postpone their honeymoon in order to join the family beach vacation.

"That just tells you how committed they were to family," Dana Carson said.