Lt. Col. Brian Baldwin, an Air Force Reserve Command F-22 pilot assigned to the 302nd Fighter Squadron at JB Elmendorf-Richardson, helped nine-year-old MacAidan “Mac” Gallegos honor his father’s memory during a local training flight on 24 January 2013. Mac, who was only five when his father, Army Sgt. Justin Gallegos, was killed in Afghanistan in 2009, wanted to have a personal letter get “as close to heaven as possible” to celebrate what would have been the elder Gallegos’ thirty-first birthday. A Facebook request for a pilot to fly the letter was seen by Kyle Moxley, a representative from HAVE Alaska, a state-wide civilian veterans’ support organization, and he coordinated the request with 3rd Wing officials at Elmendorf.
