On Friday, January 27th, 2012, Tony Baughman left school, excited to drop off his little sister so he could go spend a fun night out with friends. They planned on working together on the car that he had just bought with his own money two weeks earlier. Tony was also planning on taking a young lady on a date to their local high school basketball game. This was when God changed the story. At 4:36 pm, Tony was driving up I-75 north with a good friend that was also a senior at Silverdale Baptist Academy when Tony lost control of his car and ran into the concrete rail. At that point in time, Tony went to be with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Tony’s family and friends will forever remember Tony as a happy, fun-loving eighteen-year-old young man, looking forward to graduating in May of 2012. We are all very thankful that the young man in the car with Tony was not seriously injured and that no other automobiles were involved. However, we also wish that he, like the young man in the car with him, had put on his seatbelt, and we wish Tony would have slowed down and been a little more cautious in his driving.
We will forever miss the young man that could even make the meanest teachers laugh, always made sure everyone around him was smiling and had more girls to call him their “boyfriend” then we could ever count. He always had a way about him that made everyone feel like they were important. He was very much a gift from God on earth for only eighteen short but memorable years.