Family, friends remember young couple who died in head-on crash

TEXAS COUNTY, Mo. – The sudden death of a Springfield woman, her boyfriend and her 5-year-old daughter has shocked those closest to them.

Helen Drury, Tommy Federico and their child died in a head-on car crash Wednesday afternoon on Highway 17 in Texas County.

"You can be having a bad day and she could walk in the room and it's like everything would go away," said Helen's former schoolmate Shameka Whitehead.

A high school friend of Helen's, Morgan Steadman, said she always lit up a room.

"You can just feel her happiness and how she's just excited to do something or glad to be somewhere," Steadman said. "It was just something she always carried with her and she had a way of spreading it around."

Steadman was on the Central High School Kilties team with Helen from 2015 to 2017.

"She knew how to make anybody smile, especially on the Corps," Steadman said. "We do a lot of performances, so things can get pretty stressful and frustrating. And Helen just knew how to make everybody laugh and kind of feel more light instead of being very stressed out."

The last time she saw Helen in person was at graduation.

"The pictures that we have together just kind of make my heart feel a little bit heavy," Steadman said.

Whitehead told OzarksFirst that talking about the couple in the past tense is extremely painful. She was in medical assistance school with Helen at Jordan Valley Community Health Center.

"If you were going through something and you just needed somebody to talk to, somebody to just laugh with or somebody to just sit there and hold your hand, that would have been Helen," Whitehead said.

Issy Kessinger has known Helen since middle school.

"If I could say one more thing to her, it would be, 'Thank you for just always being there for everyone and treating everyone so nice and kindly,'" Kessinger said.

Shameka emphasized that Helen was family-driven.

"Every conversation that she'd bring up, it was about her baby," Whitehead said. "Either her man or her baby."

Friends and family both told OzarksFirst that Helen and Tommy were expecting another child when they passed.

"I just pray for her family," Whitehead said. "I really do. And I pray that they find peace in that they heal from this pain."

Helen and Tommy's two other children were hospitalized after the crash.

The Kilties are working with Helen's family to set up a fundraiser and a tribute soon.