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CommunitySoldier killed in Afghanistan
Family says Great Mills grad believed in Army’s mission
Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008
 Click here to enlarge this photo Photo courtesy of JUSTIN MERRIMAN, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Sgt. Ryan Patrick Baumann takes part in a patrol in Afghanistan, where the Great Mills High School graduate died last week.
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‘‘Ryan was a hero,” Lauren Smith said of the 24-year-old sergeant whom she met while they were students at Great Mills High School and planned to marry next January. ‘‘Ryan would not have wanted to die any other way than next to his soldiers, and for them.”
Cindy Lohman, a nurse with the Calvert County Health Department, shared a similar sentiment as she too reflected at her Great Mills home on the loss of her son.
‘‘You never expect this,” Lohman said. ‘‘He is a hero.”
Baumann died last Friday, military authorities report, when an improvised explosive device detonated near the vehicle he was traveling in on Route Alaska in Afghanistan. Baumann was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky., specifically with the 4th Battalion of the 320th Field Artillery Regiment’s 4th Brigade.
‘‘We’re very proud of Ryan,” his mother said. ‘‘It’s very hard. It’s heartbreaking.”
Born in Ohio, Baumann lived with his mother and stepfather in Germany before they moved to St. Mary’s in 1996. He and his sister, Christina Baumann, now living in Arizona, delivered newspapers in their neighborhood.
While enrolled at Great Mills High School, where he graduated in 2003, Ryan Baumann developed a love for photography that grew out of classes with teacher Lori Sides.
The soldier later kept in touch with his photography teacher, sending her e-mails and stopping in for visits at school while on leave.
‘‘You just don’t believe it when you hear it,” Sides said. ‘‘My heart goes out to them,” she said of his family.
Sides said that Baumann and his future fiancée would often hang out in the photography department at the school, and that Baumann would spend his lunches in the darkroom working on prints.
‘‘He’s the kind of student [that] teachers hope for. He was motivated and dedicated,” Sides said.
Josh Stevenson said Baumann, a friend since middle school, waited for him at the bus stop when he moved into the family’s neighborhood off Chancellor’s Run Road, to help his friend make the adjustment.
‘‘I told everybody, ‘That’s my brother’,” Stevenson said, and they made the transition from riding bicycles together to cruising in a car. ‘‘With his presence no longer around,” he said, ‘‘it’s hard to imagine.”
Before his military career, Baumann would visit his father in Indiana and talk of trips with friends to hang out at Point Lookout, one of the many coastal areas that were the subjects of his photographs.
‘‘He also went to the racetrack up there [in Budds Creek], the drag strip,” Robert Baumann said Monday from his home in the town of Jeffersonville. ‘‘He used to take his car over there and race it once in a while,” the father said. ‘‘He had an old Volvo that was supercharged.”
Ryan Baumann talked of pursuing a law enforcement career and heard that military service could aid that goal, his family said, but he developed a deep appreciation for his mission in Afghanistan in its own right. His enlistment in early 2005 was followed by duty in Iraq, a promotion to sergeant while stateside last fall and a deployment in March to Afghanistan, the focus of the war on terrorism after 9⁄11.
‘‘In the end, he loved the military,” his mother said. ‘‘He was very ... proud of what they were doing. They were in harm’s way, but it was important to him.”
Baumann’s duties put him on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, ‘‘right on the border with the tribal regions, ... where the Taliban have their stronghold and are ramping up,” according to his stepfather, Gary Lohman.
The soldier’s duty in part was to help counteract the enemy’s influence. ‘‘They try to win the hearts and minds of the locals,” Lohman said. ‘‘That’s what he enjoyed.”
‘‘Many of the times,” Cindy Lohman said, ‘‘they’re bringing food out, and supplies for kids.”
The soldier’s family will receive visitors starting at 2 p.m. next Sunday, Aug. 10, at the Brinsfield Funeral Home in Leonardtown, where prayers will be held at 4 p.m. that day and a funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. next Monday, Aug. 11. He will be buried at 2 p.m. that day at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Plans are under way to encourage St. Mary’s residents to stand and fly flags along the route from the funeral home along Hollywood Road and north on Route 5.
During the invocation at Tuesday’s meeting of the St. Mary’s County commissioners, Commissioner Daniel H. Raley (D) asked for ‘‘special grace and comfort” for the soldier’s family.
Justin Merriman spent two weeks in May with Ryan Baumann while on assignment for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review as an embedded photographer. Merriman said he got to know Baumann well during his time in Afghanistan and in communications since.
‘‘You basically live with them for the period of time you’re there,” Merriman said. ‘‘He was a dedicated soldier; he really believed in what he was doing.”
When Merriman returned after his assignment he shared some of his photos with Baumann’s fiancée and family.
‘‘He was really excited about getting married,” he said.
Merriman said that Baumann and his unit hit another IED about a couple of weeks ago, but he was not seriously injured.
Baumann quickly sought a return to duty in the field, from the guard duty post he was given after that earlier incident, his stepfather said.
‘‘He really believed in the work they were doing,” Lohman said. ‘‘That’s why he was out there, and that’s why he was in the lead vehicle.”
Merriman heard reports that Baumann was coming back from a night mission in the Khost province along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border when his Humvee hit the IED that killed him. At least two others in his unit were injured, Merriman said.
‘‘Every time we lose one of these guys, it’s a loss to our country,” Merriman said.
Baumann and his fiancée planned to marry next winter during the scheduled midpoint leave from his deployment. Smith is studying to be an X-ray technologist, and lives in St. Mary’s City.
‘‘I would hear from Ryan at least every three days when he was deployed, ... by telephone,” she said. ‘‘I talked to him the day before he was killed. He sounded happy, and he was happy with the way the mission was going, and that he would talk with me later.”
She added, ‘‘He believed that we’re helping the people over there. I don’t think that Ryan’s spirit is going to leave there until his soldiers are home.”
