A proud mom aboard the doomed American Airlines flight snapped a photo of her two beaming ice skater daughters, both Olympic hopefuls, just before it took off from Kansas on Wednesday.
Donna Livingston captured Everly, 14, and Alydia, 11, as well as herself and her husband, Peter, just before takeoff and sent the eerie photos to another US Figure Skating team mom.
Everly’s coach, Inna Volyanskaya, can be seen in the row behind them.
“They were my little babies,” a tearful Jin Ah Longerbeam, who received the photo of the sisters from Donna, told ABC News Friday.
Longerbeam said she knew the family since the girls were “little rugrats” and that they called her son, Wolfe Jin, a brother.
Longerbeam remembered the girls’ parents as “really vivacious people.”
“They supported their girls’ dreams,” she said. “We did everything we can to try to make our kids dreams come true, and they did it every single moment and every single day.”
The family of four also rarely traveled together, she noted, but happened to on the fateful day as they flew home to Virginia from an ice skating development camp in Wichita.
“Everly and Alydia were two of the brightest people at our rink,” Wolfe said of his teammates. “The community looked up to them.”
He was in Virginia when he heard news of the crash and drove with his mom to the airport, still hopeful that there were survivors. He brought jackets for the girls because he knew they’d be cold if they’d plunged into the Potomac’s frigid waters.
“He kept saying, ‘They’re gonna be cold … [we have to make] sure they’re warm,’” his emotional mother said.
“My goals are to actually be a part of Team USA and travel around the world,” Everly told FOX5 DC last year.
“It’s sad to see them have to go out like this because I know that their futures were so promising,” Wolfe said.
Fourteen figure skaters were among the 64 killed aboard the plane.
Three soldiers on the helicopter were also killed.
