Vigil for tragic pol
Indiana car-crash sorrow
Indiana US Rep. Jackie Walorski’s heartbroken husband on Thursday fought back tears as he paid tribute to his wife who died in a head-on car crash, recalling how she “took charge of whatever room she walked into.”
Walorski’s husband, Dean Swihart, recounted his courtship with his wife of 27 years in an emotional speech at a vigil at Jimtown HS in Elkhart, Ind.
“A lot of people know Jackie as Jackie, or Jackie Walorski,” he said, according to a Facebook Live video by the South Bend Tribune. “I know Jackie as Jackie Swihart, my wife . . . Jackie took charge of whatever room she walked into, and it wasn’t because she was 6 foot tall.”
Swihart recalled how they first laid eyes on each other in 1994, shortly before he took her to the St. Joseph County Fair on what was the pair’s first date.
“She says: ‘I met the man I’m gonna marry,’ ” Swihart said. “She knew that on the first date. I’m slow.”
The pair tied the knot in 1995 and made the unlikely move to Romania in 2000, where they stayed four years. There they launched Impact International — an organization aimed at helping kids and also provides medical supplies.
Once the couple returned to home soil in 2004, Walorski threw her hat in the ring of politics.
“I could not be more proud of the life my wife has lived,” Swihart said. “She lived her faith. She knew who she was. She wasn’t going to be talked down, she wasn’t going to back down.”
Walorski, 58, was riding in an SUV with her press secretary, Emma Thomson, 28, and St. Joseph County Republican Party Chairman Zachery Potts, 27, when they crashed head-on with a car driving in the opposite direction, the Elkhart County Sheriff ’s Office said.
Thomson and Potts also died as a result of the accident, along with the driver of the other car, identified as 56-year-old Edith Schmucker.
All four were wearing their seat belts, and airbags were deployed in both vehicles, police said.