Army Spc. Michael T. Manibog, 31, San Leandro; killed by bomb in Iraq

Working odd jobs and barely making ends meet, Michael T. Manibog was frustrated with the direction his life was heading and wanted to provide more for his 9-year-old son. After a heart-to-heart talk with his older sister a few years ago, he decided to join the Army.

Manibog, a 1996 graduate of San Leandro High School, deployed to Iraq for the first time in December. Two months later, he was killed in an explosion in Taji.

His sister remembered the 31-year-old Army specialist as a dedicated soldier, a devoted father to his son, Terrell, and always the life of the party.

“If there’s a party, it’s not a party without my brother,” said Catherine Manibog Davis, 33, who lives in Colorado. “He was loud and obnoxious, but in a good way. He was a jolly person, very happy.”

She said her brother enlisted, in large part, because of his son.

“It was a difficult decision for him to join the Army,” she said, “but at the same time he had no choice. He needed some kind of financial stability for his son, and he wanted his son to be proud of him.”

Before the military, Manibog drifted from one low-paying job to the next, making pizza and then managing a Round Table Pizza in San Leandro, driving delivery trucks and cutting neighbors’ lawns when he needed extra cash.

Davis said she and her brother were close, and their relationship only grew stronger when their divorced parents remarried and started new families when she and Manibog were teenagers.

Brother and sister immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in 1992 and lived with their mother in the Bay Area briefly before striking out on their own.

As Manibog continued to drift, Davis said she sat him down one day and had a heartfelt talk with him about his future. He was partying too much, she told him, and was hanging around with the “wrong crowd of people.”

“I told him, ‘You need direction in life. You have a son; make sure he looks up to you. Unfortunately you’re not providing that,’ ” she recalled. “Then I said, ‘How about the military?’ That’s when he said, ‘OK.’ ”

Once he made the decision, Manibog embraced his military career, Davis said.

At his memorial service, his unit commander told her that he was a “good soldier who made everybody laugh and smile.”

Manibog enjoyed cooking, and his fellow soldiers would look forward to the weekends when he would whip up tasty Filipino dishes, including chicken adobo and pork spare ribs with vegetables and tamarind sauce. His Army buddies nicknamed him “Meatball.”

“Maybe because he likes to cook and eat,” Davis said.

When he was home in San Leandro, Manibog often would take his son to Chuck E. Cheese’s and the bowling alley. Manibog also enjoyed playing basketball with his friends and his son.

Terrell’s mother, Brenda Reyes, 26, of San Leandro, told the San Francisco Chronicle that Manibog was a “kind-hearted person who always liked to make people laugh. He always helped other people regardless of whether he knew them or not, and basically he always had an extended hand to someone.”

In addition to his son and sister, Manibog is survived by his parents, two half sisters and two half brothers.

amanda.covarrubias@latimes.com