Friends grieve Rebecca Lobach, US Army pilot killed in DC crash

When Sabrina Bell called Capt. Rebecca Lobach last Wednesday evening, she hoped to plan a trip to see a dear friend from her time at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

Now stationed in Alaska as a chief warrant officer 2, Bell badly missed Lobach – her openness, cultured perspective and, most of all, her deep empathy.

Within hours, when she got the call, Bell was hit with a wave of shock, then disbelief. Lobach was one of three military personnel in the Army helicopter that collided with a passenger plane near Washington, D.C., sending both aircraft spiraling into the Potomac River.

The crash, among the worst aviation disasters in modern history, left no survivors. The Army identified those killed alongside Lobach in the helicopter as Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia, and Andrew Loyd Eaves, a 39-year-old chief warrant officer 2 from Great Mills, Maryland.

And for the people who loved Lobach, it left a gripping sorrow and the memories of a brilliant mind, dedicated servicemember and a loving friend.

Lobach, a 28-year-old aviation officer assigned to the 12th Aviation Battalion, was the only female pilot on the flight. In an unusual move, the Army granted her family’s request to hold her name before it was released on Saturday evening. It came after President Donald Trump, with little explanation, pointed the finger at DEI, or diversity, equity, and inclusion, practices as a factor behind the crash.

“Not only did she deserve what she achieved, but she was overqualified most of the time for what she was able to accomplish,” said Capt. Bilal Kordab, who recruited Lobach to the North Carolina National Guard. “Nothing was just handed to her.”

“I am hoping that people can look past the political aspect of the whole situation and look past her race and her gender,” Bell said. “I hope that she’s remembered more for the impact that she had on other people’s lives.”

Lobach’s friends say excellence was her natural state of being.

A Durham, North Carolina, native, Lobach enlisted in the state’s Army National Guard in December 2018.

She was commissioned as an active duty aviation officer months later. She quickly skyrocketed through the ranks, and latched onto piloting like a bird to air.

Lobach graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in biology in 2019. A distinguished military graduate, she was in the top 20% of cadets in the nation, according to the Army.

For her friends in college and in service, she was a baker of delicious bagels and a “sounding board” for on-point advice, according to Bell. She devoured books on topics from meditation to psychology and churned out book recommendations for her friends, sometimes offering unprompted to buy them a copy. She had a vocabulary full of “$10 words,” said Lt. Samantha Brown, a close friend who near Lobach for years after they met at UNC.

“How do you sum up 28 years of a person?” asked Brown, who is now assigned to a Special Operations Command unit. “28 years old and gone violently…it’s the worst possible thing.”

Lobach previously played on the basketball team of Sewanee, the University of the South, in Tennessee, and she never let her physical strength slide. At the gym together, “Rebecca would smoke the ever living hell out of me,” Brown said. “She could throw weight around, like nobody’s business.”

And it was crystal clear why Lobach joined the military – serving her country came naturally to her, from her work as a gold bar recruiter for Duke University to her piloting. She had more than 450 hours of flying under her belt, according to the Army.

“She was just so jazzed” to pick up the title of captain a year ago, said Brown. “She was so proud to be piloting command.”

Lobach’s service extended beyond the military – she was a certified victim advocate with SHARP, the Army’s Sexual Harassment/Assault Response and Prevention program, and a White House military social aide.

Less than a week after the crash, Brown still feels like she is walking through a nightmare. After the news, she “fell apart,” Brown said.

“They only pulled her out of the water 12 hours ago, not even,” she said. “How do you even comprehend it? It doesn’t feel real.”

Brown said she was confident, despite the political rhetoric swirling around her friend’s death, that Lobach would be remembered for one thing – that she heartily deserved her success.

“Rebecca earned her place in that aircraft,” she said. “She was outstanding, and she deserved to be there.”

“Rebecca was a patriot. She was a daughter, a sister, a friend,” she said. “I’m going to miss her for the rest of my life.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Friends mourn Capt. Rebecca Lobach, US Army pilot killed in DC crash