Father mourns loss of daughter

By From news service reports,

Copyright © 2003 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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	Blethen Maine News Service by Andy Molloy Sharon Swartworth, a 26-year Army veteran, was among six soldiers killed Friday when their helicopter went down near the Tigris River. She had planned to retire in January and move with her family to Hawaii.
	Blethen Maine News Service by Andy Molloy Bernard Mayo discusses the death of his daughter, Army Chief Warrant Officer Sharon Swartworth, in his home in Litchfield on Sunday. Swartworth was born and raised in Rhode Island, and her father, a former salesman, retired to Maine.

LITCHFIELD — The father of an Army warrant officer who was killed in a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Iraq said Sunday he still can't understand what his daughter was doing in the aircraft. Bernard Mayo's daughter, Sharon Swartworth, a 26-year Army veteran, was among six soldiers killed Friday when their helicopter went down near the Tigris River, about a half-mile from the U.S. base in Saddam Hussein's former palace. An investigation was under way Sunday to determine what caused the crash, but several officers believed the Black Hawk was shot down by insurgents.

Mayo, 67, a former salesman who retired in Maine, said he had seen news reports about the downed chopper, but it never occurred to him that his daughter might be on board.

Mayo said he has no idea what his daughter was doing in Iraq. Many of her assignments, he said, were secret.

"This was going to be the last thing that she was going to be involved in. She was going to retire after January," Mayo said Sunday in his Litchfield home. "Why would they take a 43-year-old mother with a 7-year-old son and send her to Saddam's hometown? You tell me. I've asked that question."

Mayo said his daughter, who would have turned 44 on Saturday, planned to move to Hawaii with her husband, William, a Navy commander and medical doctor, and their son, William Jr., after completing her assignment. Her husband recently took on a new assignment running a hospital in Hawaii and the couple intended to sell their house in Virginia.

"Sharon was going on this last mission, and then she was going to join Bill in January, the first of the year, in Hawaii, and that's where she was going to retire," Mayo said. "Everything looked so great, then to have this thing happen . . ."

Swartworth was born in Providence, R.I., in 1959 and grew up in Warwick, R.I., where she graduated from high school.

In June 1999, she was selected as the warrant officer of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, serving as the primary adviser to the judge advocate general on all matters concerning legal administrators in the Army. She also was the operations director for legal technology in the office of the judge advocate general.

Mayo, who signed the papers that allowed his daughter to enter the military before her 18th birthday, said she traveled around the world before being assigned to the Pentagon. She had been on assignments in Korea in the Demilitarized Zone and went on other missions he didn't know about. He said she accepted assignments gracefully and loved her country.

"She did it all, and we can be proud of her," Mayo said. "She was a soldier."

The last time Mayo saw her was in March when he was traveling back from Florida with his companion, Donna Bartlett. Bartlett said Swartworth called last Sunday before she got on the plane for Iraq.

"She said she was only going to be there until the 15th," Bartlett said.

This wasn't the first time that Swartworth had been in harm's way. On Sept. 11, 2001, she avoided likely death in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon. She had moved out of her office in the military headquarters building while it was being remodeled and was working out of temporary quarters, her father said.

While she was in her temporary office, the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, making a direct hit on the area where Swartworth's office had been located. A two-star general occupying the office at the time was killed.

Swartworth's husband was making arrangements to bury her in Arlington National Cemetery, Mayo said Sunday. Once her husband meets with Army officials today, Mayo said the family will travel to Rhode Island, where his son Bryan lives, and then drive down to Virginia.

Mayo said his favorite memory of his daughter was when she invited him down to Washington, D.C., for a sunrise Easter service at Arlington Cemetery.

"We were sitting there in the dark waiting for the sun to come out in the rotunda behind the Unknown Soldier monument. That was an experience I'll never forget, being with her for that sunrise service."

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