Sharon T. Swartworth was one of the lucky ones Sept. 11. The highjacked jet that hit the Pentagon destroyed an office she had only recently given up to a general.

09:42 AM EST on Sunday, November 9, 2003

BY PAUL EDWARD PARKER
Journal Staff Writer

Forty-four years ago yesterday, Bernard Mayo was welcoming his daughter Sharon into the world. Now, he is planning to bury her.

Sharon T. (Mayo) Swartworth was among the six people killed Friday when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed in Iraq, according to Swartworth's family. The cause of the crash remains uncertain, although the U.S. command has said initial findings discount surface-to-air missiles as a cause.

Swartworth was 17 when she graduated from Warwick's Pilgrim High School in 1977, but she already knew what she wanted to do with her life: pursue a career in the Army. The recruiters had convinced her during a trip to Pilgrim, and her father signed papers that allowed her to join before her 18th birthday.

In her 26 years in the Army, Swartworth rose through the ranks to become warrant officer of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the branch of the Army that operates the military justice system. In that position, holding the ranking of chief warrant officer five, she was the primary adviser to the judge advocate general on administrative matters. She was also the director of operations for legal technology, overseeing JAG computer systems.

"You never met a person any more dedicated than she was," her father, who now lives in Litchfield, Maine, said yesterday. "She had goals and she worked so hard at them."

Standing only 5 feet 2 inches tall, it was not her physical stature, but her inner drive that carried her so far in her career. "You look at her, and you'd think she's a peanut, but she's a real leader," said her father. "I couldn't be any prouder."

Swartworth's death was doubly stunning to her family, given her job duties in the Army.

"She wasn't going to fight," said her niece, Kristen Mayo, 22, of Warwick. "She was going for other things, and I didn't think anything of it."

Sharon T. Swartworth

Exactly what her mission was remains unclear. "I wish somebody would tell me," said her father.

Swartworth visited with her family for several days last month while she was in Rhode Island to take part in a program at the Naval War College in Newport. "She babysat my daughter while I went to work," said Kristen Mayo.

She had planned to visit her father in Maine, but was unable to make it, she said.

Last Sunday, she phoned her family in Rhode Island from an airport to tell them she was on her way to Iraq.

She talked to her grandmother, Theresa Holmes. "She was saying she loved me," Homes said yesterday. "I told her to be careful."

"She was very upbeat about it," said Swartworth's niece.

But the conversation with her brother Bryan cast a dark shadow, according to her father. She told him, "If anything happens in Iraq, you'll be able to come and see a nice service in Arlington."

This was not the first time harm had come her way.

In the summer of 2001, her office at the Pentagon was being renovated. When the work was done, a general liked it so much he decided to move in, leaving Swartworth in temporary quarters until a neighboring office was finished.

On Sept. 11, American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the JAG section of the Pentagon. "Her office was a direct hit," said her father. The general who had taken her place died in the attack.

"The Army was big in her life," said Swartworth's niece. "She cared very much about her job, and she cared very much about her son."

Her son, William Swartworth III, 8, and her husband, William Swartworth, live in Hawaii. Her husband, a Navy officer, recently took a job in charge of a hospital there.

The couple had been making plans to sell their house in Virginia, where Sharon Swartworth was living. She had hoped to join her husband and son in Hawaii, where she could retire from the Army.