Md. Families Mourn Deaths of 4 in Helicopter Crash

Ashley J. Younger, 17

Younger always answered her cellphone with these words: "House of Beauty, Miss Cutie speaking." She was energetic, outgoing, friendly, caring and very fashionable. Her style? "Bohemian Chic."

"She would let me come visit her at college only if I promised to look like a mama but not an old maid," her single mother, Stephanie Younger, said Monday.

Younger graduated from Westlake in June and was a freshman at Frostburg State University, where she studied accounting, had joined numerous clubs and "was having a blast," her mother said.

Younger had returned home to Waldorf for the weekend to attend her mother's promotion ceremony at the Pentagon. She was becoming a sergeant first class, a major milestone for the mother and daughter who "grew up together" in the Army.

With the house full of visiting relatives, Younger planned to spend Saturday night in her mother's room. That way, the two could talk about school and the cute chemistry major she had just met.

On Saturday evening, Ashley Younger put on a blue sundress -- the same one she wore to a graduation barbecue over the summer -- with a brown jacket and some "slouchy brown boots." She and Wells, a friend from high school, went to a carnival at the Waldorf mall. The two girls thought about seeing a movie but decided to call it a night.

Wells was close to Younger's home when the crash occurred. Younger immediately called her mother, who arrived at the scene with a friend and Younger's grandmother.

Stephanie Younger kissed her daughter and reassured the teen as she lay on a stretcher on a Southern Maryland roadway illuminated by ambulance lights.

"You'll be okay," she remembers telling her. "They just want to check you out. You'll be fine."

Hours later, Stephanie Younger learned that her daughter had died in the helicopter crash as she was being taken to the hospital.

"She was like no other kid I knew," Younger said, standing in her daughter's room. "She would give of herself to others. She hated to see others mistreated."

The Younger family plans to have a memorial service in Southern Maryland, followed by a funeral and burial in South Carolina where Stephanie Younger grew up.