to receive thousands of dollars in golf savings throughout Minnesota and Northern Ontario. PHOTO ... Parkland man killed in Ira

Untitled Document Cpl. Kenneth Cross proposed to his girlfriend after two weeks of dating. He enlisted in the U.S. Army without discussing it with his parents. Cross, 21, was a man who knew what he wanted in life and made it happen.

Cross was killed Sunday in a roadside bomb explosion in Iraq, his parents, Michael and Elizabeth Cross of Parkland, east of Superior, said Monday.

Based in Fort Lewis, Wash., Kenneth had been in the Middle East for two months, stationed in Kuwait and then Baghdad. As a driver of a Stryker tank, he was trained in frontline combat duties.

As he drove down a road in Iraq recently, a young girl walking nearby with her mother blew Kenneth a kiss, Elizabeth said. He caught it in his hand and smiled at her.

Kenneth Cross is the second former Superior High School student killed while serving in Iraq. Marine Lance Cpl. Adam Van Alstine of Superior suffered fatal wounds from a roadside bomb in February.

Kenneth dropped out of high school during his senior year and earned his general education diploma, "because he wanted to go right into the service," Elizabeth said.

"He was determined; he was going to be in the infantry and you couldn't talk him out of it," Elizabeth said. "I didn't think it was the right time for him to go into the service."

Kenneth met his future wife, Heidi, of Steilacoom, Wash., through an online dating service about two years ago. The two were friends for some time before dating; they married in April. The couple had planned to start a family when he returned from Iraq next year, and a reception for those who missed their wedding in Washington was in the works.

"He was always doing something goofy to make me laugh, even on the bad days," Heidi Cross said in a phone interview. "He treated me like a queen and an angel. I don't think we ever had a bad moment."

"People say I'm pretty lucky to have talked to him right before it happened," she said, grateful she was able to tell him she loved him. "I don't know how many times."

Kenneth liked to play guitar and video games, watch horror movies and jog. He got used to doing push-ups in basic training, his mother said, because his sense of humor often got him in trouble.

"I told him when he went over there it took me nine months to put him together perfectly, and there better not be any more holes in him than when he left," Elizabeth said. "He didn't listen."

The Crosses had just learned his address in Baghdad and had begun assembling a care package filled with drawings from his nieces and nephews, beef jerky and dill pickle-flavored chips, his favorite.

"We weren't prepared for the worst," his mother said. "Kids are supposed to grow up and have grandchildren for you. Hopefully, you live to see the great-grandchildren, and then they carry on. It's not supposed to happen this way."

This is cache, read story here