So. Md. soldier dies in Afghanistan

Budd’s Creek racer killed in IED attack

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008

‘‘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 reported, when an improvised explosive device exploded 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., with the 4th Battalion of the 320th Field Artillery Regiment.

‘‘We’re very proud of Ryan,” his mother said in an interview. ‘‘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 County in 1996. He and his sister, Christina Baumann, now living in Arizona, delivered newspapers in their neighborhood.

While enrolled at Great Mills, 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 fiancee 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 [who] teachers hope for. He was motivated and dedicated,” Sides said.

Before his military career, Baumann would visit his father in Indiana and talk of trips 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 Jeffersonville, Ind. ‘‘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 last March to Afghanistan, the original 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.

‘‘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. Aug. 10 at the Brinsfield Funeral Home in Leonardtown, where prayers will be held at 4 p.m. that day and a service will be held at 10 a.m. Aug. 11. He will be buried at 2 p.m. that day at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.