Romain Didier was only 10 years old when he first visited Orlando as an exchange student in 1992, but that didn’t stop him from forming a lifelong friendship with Mascotte City Manager Jim Gleason’s family.

“I had just spoken to Romain maybe two weeks ago via Facebook, just about something he had posted and communicating," Gleason said. "We always say that constant, 'hey love you, tell your parents we said hi and we love them,' and he responds back and then you make that comment you gotta get back over to the states, 'well you need to get back over to France,' yeah we gotta do that.

"Sometimes we keep thinking there’s tomorrow and you wake up and you find out tomorrow isn’t going to happen."

Gleason learned of the Paris attacks on Friday but did not know he lost a friend until he received the tragic news in a message from Didier’s mother on his phone Saturday morning.

“To see that on the news, like a lot of people feeling disgusted and upset saying, 'oh my gosh this is a tragedy' and going to bed and getting up and finding out, oh my gosh, there’s a face to this tragedy, the face for us was Romain. Someone who we’d met at 10 years old, coming and staying with us for six weeks for the summer," Gleason shared.

Romain Didier, 32, was just one of many who were killed inside a concert hall Friday night.

“No one expects a person to die and not in a terrorist attack," Gleason said.

However, what was supposed to be a one-time exchange opportunity visiting theme parks and beaches, turned into the cultural experience of a lifetime for both families.

"This is somebody who we had in our home, we’d been in their home. We had traveled to France. He had been with us probably three times, three years in a row here in Orlando and then we were over in France," Gleason said.

Romain Didier would have turned 33 in December.

“His zest and his taste for life probably was second to none and to see somebody who had so much to offer and touch so many people, to lose it so tragically is just so hard, so hard to understand," Gleason said.

The flag at Mascotte City Hall is seen at half-staff.