This Centerville soldier died in a fiery plane crash in 1985. His sisters salute him still
It was Memorial Day and the fallen soldier’s sisters had come to the cemetery bearing flowers — for their mother’s grave.
Their mother, Agnes, died in April at age 83 and she was buried beside their brother, Eric, in Magnolia Park Cemetery.
Army Cpl. Eric Joseph Baumann, who served in the 502nd Infantry, 3rd Battalion, of the 101st Airborne Division, had turned 19 four days before an airplane crash in Canada killed him and 255 others on board Dec. 12, 1985.
In all, 248 U.S. troops died that day when the chartered DC-8 flying them from Egypt to their home base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, went down on takeoff after refueling in Newfoundland.
On Monday, Eric Baumann was one of the hundreds of locals saluted for paying the ultimate sacrifice while serving.
Many of the personal stories of those buried in the sprawling graveyard on South Pleasant Hill Road are part of this city’s indelible ties to the military — and of the military’s ties to it. Their lives and their deaths are reflected upon each Memorial Day, and no doubt far more often than that by surviving loved ones.
From the look of the flags standing sentry over the graves at Magnolia Park on Monday, at least half if not more of those interred here have connections to the armed forces. Some 200 or so people in attendance at Monday’s annual ceremony paid their respects.
“Today’s about thanking God,” Warner Robins Mayor Randy Toms said, “for those who laid down their lives.”
Eric Baumann, a 1984 Northside High School graduate whose passing nearly 34 years ago made front-page news in The Telegraph, had plans to attend engineering school at Georgia Tech after fulfilling a two-year commitment in the Army. He had enlisted at age 17 with his parents’ blessings.
On a break while stationed at Fort Campbell in the summer of 1985, five or so months before his death, Eric Baumann had traveled with his mother and his father, Howard, to visit his grandfather’s farm in the Kentucky countryside.
When the Baumanns dropped their son off back at the base, Agnes Baumann had an eerie premonition.
Eric’s sister, Teresa Baumann, now 54, said that when her parents dropped Eric off, “Mom basically heard a voice saying, ‘Take a good look, it’s the last time you’re gonna see your son alive.’”
His other sister who attended Monday’s annual Memorial Day gathering, Tina Sauls, 59, said her brother had asked special permission to take that flight home so that he could travel with some of his fellow soldiers.
When Eric Baumann died, his father, Howard, told The Telegraph that his son, the quietest and youngest of five children, “always thought of everybody else first. He helped out the neighbors, and every time he did something he wasn’t one to hold out his hand to get a reward.”
Eric lent people a hand, Howard Baumann had said, to help.
Tina Sauls on Monday recalled that her brother had gone into the Army as “a boy.”
“And died as a man,” she added. “That’s one thing I always said. We never got to see the ‘man’ part of him. He had six months left to serve.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2019 at 3:58 PM.