Ashly Moyer has services ahead of internment at Arlington

Army Sgt. Ashly Lynn Moyer's friends from Emmaus High School stood across the street Saturday from the Bachman, Kulik & Reinsmith Funeral Home for a tearful reunion of the Class of 2003.

Veterans, some in motorcycle jackets and leather chaps, ringed the Emmaus funeral home with 25 U.S. flags. They nodded solemnly at the 300 mourners who filed in for Moyer's memorial service.

Moyer, 21, died March 3 in a roadside bombing in Baghdad. The Army told her parents, Jane Drumheller of Pike County and Michael Moyer of Lower Macungie, that insurgents detonated a buried bomb right in front of her armored patrol vehicle, creating a fireball out of the fuel tank and killing her and two sergeants riding with her.

She was cremated and will be interred Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.

''The good go young,'' said Terry Schwartz of Macungie, who met her at Eyer Middle School. ''That's all I can say that makes sense.''

The sweet teenager he knew – the one who went to Dorney Park with them and goofed off and had fun and dated one of his friends – was gone. Unbelievable.

Her teenage years were turbulent and troubled, friends and family said. But Moyer pulled her life together in 10th grade and began hitting the books, said Kevin Torpey of Wescosville.

''She started to really think about her future,'' Torpey said. ''She wanted to join the Army.''

After high school, she attended the Army Military Police School in Missouri, graduating in March 2004. After her first assignment in Cuba, she returned home to Emmaus for a year before returning to active duty. She was stationed in Bamberg, Germany, for about five months before shipping off to Iraq.

''She was so excited about it,'' Schwartz said. ''She was turning her life around.''

Sgt. Reginald McClary of Souderton served with Moyer in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from 2004 to 2005, guarding enemy combatants held since the war in Afghanistan began. He remembered her as a jolly person who made the other soldiers laugh, liked to bowl with her friends, and always stood up for what she believed.

McClary heard about the explosion from other people in her unit, the 630th Military Police Company, 793rd Military Police Battalion.

Moyer was the fourth person from the region to die in combat in Iraq this year and the 21st to die thus far in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Nearly 3,200 soldiers have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003.

''She was just a baby,'' said McClary, a strapping man in camouflage and combat boots. ''A baby.''

Inside, mourners queued in three rooms to pay their respects to the family, passing a display of photos, flowers, sports memorabilia and a condolence letter with a handwritten note from Gov. Ed Rendell.

The first thing they saw was created by Moyer's youngest sister, Teagan Moyer, who colored posterboard with markers, adorned it with pictures of her and her big sister, and wrote across it: ''My sister rocks and is a hero!''

Moyer was extremely close to her two brothers and two sisters, making no distinction between step-, half- or full siblings, relatives said.

She called Tyler and Kyle Clark her ''slaves'' and liked to dunk her brothers underwater, a fact one of the boys called out during Army Chaplain David Farrell's eulogy.

Several relatives, including Teagan, shared their memories of Moyer. An aunt spoke about another family member's military service – her grandfather served as a Marine in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

''Ashly went into the Army to fight for our freedom,'' Teagan said.

One of the closest people in the world to Moyer was her stepsister Karissa Thomas. They met when they were both 4. Thomas was six months older, and she never let Moyer forget it.

As young girls, they dressed up their dogs as bride and groom and threw them a pretend wedding. Dozens of photos depict them wrestling, hugging and grinning at the camera as they grew from children to teenagers to young adults.

''My sister was strong and ambitious, had an amazing personality, and was bright in so many ways,'' Thomas said.

Moyer was both a tomboy and a princess, a pretty young woman with brown hair and blue eyes who loved softball, acrobatics and jazz.

The strength she possessed put most grown men to shame, Thomas said, tears rolling down her cheeks.

''I know she's standing behind me right now, telling me to stop crying like a girl,'' she said.

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