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Baker had planned to ride his bicycle from Norman to Washington, D.C., and Gettysburg, Pa., to Marseilles, Ill., to support a new flag designed to honor fallen members of the military, the Norman Transcript reported March 8. He planned to fly the Honor and Remember Flag from his bike and encourage people along the way to sign a petition urging Congress to adopt the flag as a new national symbol by passing HR Bill 1034.

Baker was injured while serving as a firefighter in Kuwait in the 1990s when a Scud missile struck his barracks. Diane Zellner said he had seemed healthy enough to undertake the bike trip. "He was doing well, so this kind of took us by surprise," she said. Baker struggled with his health, but what people admired about him was how he moved forward despite his health problems and disabilities, she said. "He struggled every day, but he lived, he was going to do what he wanted to do," she said. Before he died, Baker made several blog posts from the road that can be read at www.honorandremember.org/kevin.html. His last post was Wednesday near Sherman, Texas. He said the weather was raining and 34 degrees, so he said the Honor Guard from Louisiana would pick him up and take him somewhere warmer. "He was doing something he loved," Diane Zellner said. "This was something he was passionate about."

The role of the Air Force in Afghanistan is crucial, especially as Taliban forces try to close a supply route through Pakistan's Khyber Pass and Kyrgyzstan seeks to shut a U.S. air base in that country. Nearly 600 airmen have been killed or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - and 96 percent of them have been on the ground, according to Air Force officials. Their mounting losses - partly due to expanded duties off base - prompted intensive training, begun three years ago, to help the ground airmen survive combat.