She had sold her Alexandria, Va., home and moved with her family to Hawai'i, where her Navy officer husband had a new posting. But Swartworth, 43, a chief warrant officer in the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, had one more assignment — a trip to Iraq.

Friday, she died along with five other soldiers when the Black Hawk helicopter in which she was a passenger was shot down near Tikrit.

"This was going to be Sharon’s last hurrah," said her father, Bernard Mayo, from his home in Litchfield, Maine. "They were going to live happily ever after."

Mayo said he did not know what his daughter, who had been in Iraq for only a few days, was doing there. A lead adviser to the Army’s judge advocate general, she specialized in administration.

Her husband, Capt. William Swartworth, a physician at a Navy clinic in Hawai'i, declined to comment. He and their son live in Mililani.

But a longtime friend who was her next-door neighbor on the Mainland said part of the trip involved awarding medals. Morale-boosting and "rallying the troops" were among her responsibilities, Frances Sankey said.

Swartworth, who was adept with computers, also was director of operations for legal technology for the JAG Corps, which runs the Army’s military justice system. Swartworth was one of two Pentagon officials killed Friday on the UH-60 Black Hawk that went down near the Tigris River.

Old neighbors said that during a decade here, Swartworth was a focus of a close-knit community, organizing progressive dinners for her cul-de-sac, parties on her deck and Christmas ornament and cookie exchanges.

Friend and neighbor Eileen Houser said Swartworth was thrilled eight years ago by the birth of her son, William III, and often walked around the neighborhood with him.

Sankey described Swartworth as "pretty and pretty tough," a positive, outgoing woman who was sweet and soft-spoken and smart and strong. Although the family had moved to Hawai'i, Swartworth kept an apartment near the Pentagon.

"She really loved the Army," Sankey said.