Army Sgt. Anthony J. Davis Jr., 22, Long Beach; Killed in an Explosion

Anthony Jerome Davis Jr. and his wife, Michell, danced in her mother’s Compton living room to the music of Marvin Gaye and Patti LaBelle shortly before the Army sergeant’s October deployment to Iraq.

It was a happy moment. Michell, 20, was pregnant with the daughter who would be born two weeks after Anthony’s departure. Her husband was feeling playful and “silly,” laughing and smiling.

“When he smiled, his whole face lit up and everybody else couldn’t help but smile too,” she said.

That smile caught Michell’s eye when she was just 12 and Anthony was the 13-year-old “boy next door.”

“He was different; he didn’t have to be like everybody else,” she said.

Anthony Davis, a 22-year-old father of two from Long Beach, was killed April 23 when an explosive device detonated in Mosul, Iraq, near the eight-wheeled, armored Stryker vehicle he was in, the Department of Defense said. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team) at Ft. Lewis, Wash.

A 2001 graduate of Jordan High School in Long Beach, he enlisted in the Army the summer after graduation, when Michell was pregnant with their first daughter, Ah’lania, now 4.

The couple were married April 13, 2002. Aniya, the daughter he never met or held, was born Oct. 30, 2004.

Davis didn’t tell his parents he was enlisting in the Army. When he told them that he needed their permission to finalize the paperwork because he was only 17, they tried to talk him out of it, said his mother, Charlotte Davis.

“It wasn’t about going to fight for my country,” she said. “But once he got in there, he tried to be all he could be. He did it initially to be able to support his family.”

Davis, who played football and baseball in the neighborhood park as a child and loved his mother’s “home-style” macaroni and cheese, was “smooth” and “carefree,” his mother said.

“I was truly blessed,” she said. “He didn’t do drugs, he didn’t gangbang, he didn’t disrespect us, he didn’t drink or smoke cigarettes. I couldn’t have asked for a better son. My son is a hero, and he’s my soldier, and I’ll miss him.”

Davis and his wife spoke frequently by Webcam. Their last conversation was two days before his death.

The conversation was brief and lighthearted, his wife said.

He was smiling and laughing and looked healthy, she said. He preferred to speak of the lighthearted times like singing karaoke versions of Tupac Shakur and Nelly songs with his buddies -- who called him “Ace” -- at his northern Iraq base rather than the realities of war, she said.

“He was the type of person that never really met a stranger,” his wife said. “He would talk to everybody and be friendly with everyone.”

Davis hoped to join the Los Angeles Police Department after his tour of duty, she said.

In addition to his wife, two daughters and mother, Davis is survived by his father, Anthony; two sisters, ages 9 and 15; and a brother, 11.

Davis had been awarded an Army Service Ribbon, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and National Defense Service Medal, said Tammy Reed, a Ft. Lewis spokeswoman.

A memorial service was held April 27 at Evergreen Chapel at Ft. Lewis, and the family will hold a funeral service Thursday at New Directions Christian Fellowship in Long Beach.