Dad Steps In As Prom Date After Son Killed In Crash

MERCERSBURG, PA — Kaylee Suders’ senior prom didn’t turn out like she expected after her boyfriend, Carter Brown, was killed in a car crash. She almost didn’t go to Saturday’s dance at James Buchanan High School, but couldn’t refuse the special man who asked to be her escort.

It was Carter’s father, Robert Brown. He regards Suders like a daughter and didn’t want to see her give up a big event in her last year of high school. The prom was held a month after the Indiana University of Pennsylvania freshman was killed in a surprise trip home to surprise his girlfriend of more than a year.

Carter wasn’t just Suders’ boyfriend, but an “all-around great person and my best friend,” she told the Centre Daily Times.

“He always could light up an entire room,” Suders said. “He could also talk you into doing anything. He was one of the best people that's ever been around. You couldn't find anyone that would ever say a bad thing about him.”

He was also the kind of guy who would have wanted to see Suders put on the special dress and enjoy the evening, Brown said.

“My son was a sweet, caring kid, and Kaylee is very sweet, too, and she is a part of our family,” Brown told the Daily Times. “When the passing topic of prom came up, I kept thinking my son would want her to go. That prompted me to get the ball rolling.”

Brown got permission from the school to escort Suders. When he asked if he could take her to prom, her eyes moistened.

“I was kind of surprised before he asked me, and it was really, really heartwarming,” Suders told the newspaper. "I didn't have to think about it. I definitely said ‘yes.’ It was so great of him to ask me.”

Brown mugged for the camera, as Carter would have in the traditional pre-prom ritual. They went to dinner at T.G.I. Fridays, where Carter and Suders had their first date. They rode in Carter’s Audi TT sports car.

Suders told Yahoo Lifestyle that though she had already decided not to go to prom because it would be too sad without Carter, she realized that Brown “wanted to make me happy.”

“He made prom so much fun,” she said.

“They both had a great time,” Carter’s mother, Kelly O’Neil Brown, told Yahoo. “Kaylee had so much fun getting ready. … I hope this will be a memory that she will cherish.”

The photos O’Neil Brown posted on Facebook have become an internet sensation.

“Add this to the list of reasons why I love my husband,” she wrote. “Since Carter couldn’t escort Kaylee to her prom, Robert stepped in. Kaylee, I know Rob wasn’t your first choice for a date, but he will forever be mine.”

In another post, she wrote: “This makes me feel so proud. It would have been easy for Kaylee to stay home on prom night. It probably wasn't easy for Robert to get dressed in a tux that Carter should have been wearing. (I know ordering the corsage was not easy for me. The florist didn't know what to think when I burst into tears at the counter! LOL) But I also know that this would have made Carter happy. Christopher would have approved too!”

Christopher Brown, the second of Robert and Kelly Brown’s four sons, died seven months before Carter in an opioid overdose.

“Life will have all kinds of curve balls that you can’t control,” Robert Brown told the Centre Daily Times. “You have to have strength and courage to move forward. We lost two of our children. Our circumstance happened that way. You just learn to be able to go on and live for and care for everyone you still have with you.”

Suders is among them. O’Neil Brown told Yahoo Lifestyle that Suders has become “part of our family.”

“I know one day she’ll fall in love again, get married, and have a fabulous life,” says O’Neil Brown. “I hope to be there dancing at her wedding.”

Carter, 19, was killed in a three-vehicle crash the morning of April 15. He was about an hour from Mercersburg when the collision occurred and was pronounced dead at the scene.

File photo by Katja El Sol / Shutterstock