Clockdoc,
I'm not sure why it says the flash didn't fire. Maybe it was because it was a hot-shoe mounted one and not the onboard flash? I do know it fired since I took one shot where it did not fire and the entire photo was a lot darker.
I thought about the dodge tool in Elements as well, and here is another version where I quickly touched up the back row with it. I also lightened the area around the eyes on the older woman in the middle and removed a little of the red on her right eye (eye on the left in the photo) since she just had cataract surgery and also didn't want her eyes to look "sunken" in.
