Friends remember five who died in crash

Five young Northeastern State University students died Sunday night after the pickup they were in went through a guardrail and fell about 35 feet into a creek below.

Donovan Caldwell, 18, of Muskogee; Jessica Swartwout, 18, of McAlester; Drake Wells, 19, of Thackerville; Lily Murphy, 18, of Gentry, Arkansas; and Rhianna Seely, 18, of Salina were pronounced dead at the scene.

NSU President Steve Turner said in a statement Monday morning: “I cannot fathom the pain the families and friends of these young people are going through as a result of this terrible and tragic accident. My thoughts and prayers are with them this morning.”

Donovan Caldwell

Friends said the Muskogee High School graduate had an inviting, infectious personality that immediately endeared him to his classmates.

Baylee Scrimshire, an NSU freshman, said Caldwell made their earlymorning mathematics class more tolerable.

“He just made the room a lot brighter,” Scrimshire said.

The news of Caldwell’s death didn’t sink in until Scrimshire and Dylan Hurt, both in the same 8 a.m. math lab, saw Caldwell’s empty chair Monday morning.

Jessica Swartwout

Celia Mullins, counselor at Indianola High School, from which Swartwout recently graduated, said she and the rest of the tiny Pittsburg County community were reeling from the news of their school’s most recent valedictorian.

“We’re still in shock around here,” said Mullins, who learned the news Monday morning from her husband, who works with Swartwout’s mother. “We’re just trying to take care of our other students and helping them through the grieving process.”

Mullins preferred not to get into specifics but said Swartwout had to persevere against extraordinary personal odds to be the academic leader of her graduating class of 25 or 26 students. She played on the high school basketball and softball teams and was a National Honor Society member.

During high school, Swartwout held down two jobs, sometimes simultaneously, at the JCPenney store and Billy Sims BBQ in McAlester.

“She could easily have gone the other way with the things she grew up with. Her family’s awesome, but she met a lot of tragic things in her life that could have turned her the other way, but she just grabbed the bull by the horns and faced the challenges head-on,” Mullins said.

Drake Wells

Kappa Sigma members shared the loss of their new fraternity brother after learning of his death.

He had just gone through rush with the fraternity on Friday, and on Monday, a couple dozen of his brothers gathered on campus in solidarity.

“He fit in real well with us,” Kade McMillin said. “He was super outgoing and had a sense of humor.”

Another fraternity brother said Wells’ outgoing personality could turn an average social gathering into a spontaneous dance party.

Hannah Deford, a classmate of Wells’, said the news of the five students’ deaths was devastating.

“(Wells) always tried to lift people up before he’d try to lift himself,” Deford said. “He was always very selfless.”

Lily Murphy

Current and former Gentry Public Schools cheerleaders gathered at their Arkansas school after learning about the death of their cheer mate.

Students and graduates gathered, sharing tears and laughter, to remember Lily Murphy.

The last time Joni Wilson, Murphy’s cheer coach for three years, saw her was not long ago, when Murphy was home for a football game.

Wilson said there had been a drawing for a small pot of money raised as part of a benefit for the school. Murphy won the money.

“She forfeited it and gave it back to the school,” Wilson said.

Just 10 or 15 minutes before giving the money to the school, Murphy had remarked about being a broke college student.

“That right there sums up what kind of person she was,” Wilson said.

Rhianna “Autumn” Seely

Seely’s friends have already organized a bean supper to help her father, Chuck Seely, cover her funeral costs.

It is set for 4 p.m. Wednesday at the Red Rooster Cafe, 206 W Ferry St. in Salina, where Seely worked for a time while she was in high school. In lieu of a set price for the meal, donations will be collected and given in full to Chuck Seely, said organizer Madison Wiley, whose grandmother owns the cafe.

“They were the closest a father and daughter could ever be. I’ve never seen anything else like it,” said Wiley, a friend and former classmate of Seely’s.

An annual rock ‘n’ roll festival was just one of Seely’s many musicrelated interests, which included playing the drums in the Salina High School band.

“You could bet your bottom dollar that Autumn was going to be at Rocklahoma every single year with her dad,” Wiley said.