In her Facebook pictures, Ashley Mead usually had three things on her: A gigantic smile, her unique fashion sense and her 1-year-old daughter, Winter.
“She was just such an individual,” said her friend, Morgan Jeknavorian. “She always had just such an amazing smile. And she’d wear crazy tie-dyed legging and shirts with sharks and Godzilla and birds on them.
“And she was the best mother I’ve ever met. She’s motivation for how I want to be when I have a kid.”
Friends and family are mourning the 25-year-old mother after police revealed Friday that she was likely killed in Boulder last weekend. Her ex-boyfriend and the father of her child, Adam Densmore, has been charged with first-degree murder.
Mead grew up in Warren, a city of about 10,000 in northwest Pennsylvania.
“There’s no words to describe what that girl had,” said Amelia Perry, who met Mead about 11 years ago in Pennsylvania. “That girl lived more than anyone else I know.”
“She was an old soul,” Perry added. “Ashley could tell stories. She was so full of life. Everything was an adventure.”
The next adventure for Mead was school, and she moved to Shreveport, La., to attend Centenary College of Louisiana before transferring to LSU-Shreveport. Jeknavorian met her while the two were working at the same restaurant, and lived together for a time.
Mead would often walk into Jeknavorian’s closet and find an outfit Jeknavorian hadn’t worn because it was too outlandish, then add it to the eccentric wardrobe she paired with her trademark “big silly glasses.”
“She would show up in my dress and just be rocking it,” Jeknavorian said. “She could never be caught wearing something anybody else would wear.”
Mead got into a bad car accident while studying, and the time off from school and the mounting bills prevented Mead from finishing her studies.
“She was so smart,” Perry said. “But I think she kind of wanted to do everything, and didn’t know what she wanted to do at the same time.”
‘I’ve never seen a better mom’
While studying in Louisiana, Mead met Densmore — a U.S. Army veteran from Haughton, La. — and the two began what friends described as a tumultuous and emotionally abusive relationship.
“I never cared for Adam, and I don’t think any of her friends did,” Jeknavorian said.
She said she never witnessed or heard about any physical violence, but said he was “manipulative,” and that Mead was not confident about herself around him.
“She was always miserable with Adam,” Jeknavorian said. “He tore her down mentally a lot.”
The two broke up, and Densmore moved away to Colorado to go to chef school, which is when Mead found out she was going to have a baby girl.
“She was so scared when she was pregnant,” Perry said. “She came home and we talked about it, and she decided she was going to move to Colorado. Even if she wasn’t going to be with (Densmore), she wanted to be there so her daughter could have a father.”
But even if Mead was scared about having a daughter, Jeknavorian said that the birth of Winter Daisy Mead was one of the best things to happen to her.
“She was just so proud of that baby,” Jeknavorian said. “You could see it in her eyes. It was just so amazing to see that smile on her.”
Jeknavorian said Mead’s free spirit carried over to her child-rearing philosophy.
“Winter would be sitting there in the dirt with a leaf in her mouth, and (Mead) would just be giggling,” Jeknavorian said.
But that didn’t mean Mead was not a fiercely protective and doting mother.
“I’d like to think I am a good mom, but I’ve never seen a better mom than Ashley,” Perry said. “She literally wore that baby.”
And before you think that Perry misused the word ‘literally,’ Jeknavorian said the same thing.
“She wore Winter,” Jeknavorian said. “She had all these wraps that she used. That baby was always attached to her boob.”
So when news broke that the baby had been found with Densmore but that Mead was not with her, Jeknavorian broke down and cried in her car.
“I knew, I knew she was gone,” Jeknavorian said. “She would never let (Densmore) leave with that baby.”
‘She was the happiest’
Mead got a job as a preschool teacher’s aide in Colorado after moving to Boulder. Jeknavorian also said Mead had recently been seeing another man, since she and Densmore were raising Winter but were not dating.
“She was really happy with him, and I think she was just getting her confidence back,” Jeknavorian said. “I’m really happy that she met somebody who made her feel beautiful.”
But Jeknavorian also wonders if seeing Mead with another man may have made Densmore jealous.
“Maybe that is what made him snap,” she said.
Perry never met Densmore personally, but said she also talked to Mead about him.
“It was definitely strange,” Perry said. “He seemed like a very hard person for her to communicate with. They weren’t good for each other.”
As for Winter, Perry said she has been talking with child protective services and said the baby is with a temporary foster family in Oklahoma.
“Winter is doing well,” Perry said. “She’s being taken care of.”
In the meantime, Perry has set up a fund for Winter, who is faced with growing up without a mother and possibly her father. But Perry said she hopes baby Winter grows up with the kind of love that Mead always showered her with, and it is why she is choosing to remember Mead’s life and not her death.
“She wanted every single moment of her child’s life to be full of love,” Perry said. “Anytime someone got down, Ashley would tell them to shut up and remember how much beautiful stuff there is in the world. She was the happiest. Every time she walked through the room, she would have a huge, beautiful smile that would never quit.”
Mitchell Byars: 303-473-1329, byarsm@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/mitchellbyars
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