Army Sgt. John Allen, 25, Palmdale; among 4 killed in explosion

When John Allen decided to join the military after graduating from high school in 1999, his mother told him that it had to be the Air Force or Navy. She figured she would worry less than if he were in the Army or Marine Corps.

Allen picked the Navy. He served four years, then came home to Palmdale, hoping to become a police officer or a high-end security guard.

Neither job panned out, and in 2005 he went back into the military, this time into the Army, following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Allen trained as a medic, and loved when his friends called him Doc. Then, in July, he married his high school sweetheart, Aspen Shinkle.

When he shipped to Iraq in November, his mother said, she felt that he had “become a man.”

“He had chosen his right path,” Kellie Allen said.

Four months later, the 25-year-old sergeant was among four soldiers killed March 17 when a roadside bomb exploded near their vehicle in Baghdad.

He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 12th Calvary Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division at Ft. Bliss, Texas.

Allen’s family said they take comfort in knowing that he was doing a job he believed in, alongside comrades he loved.

His family, however, has lost the person whose gift it was to make everyone around him feel a bit happier. “He was our peacemaker,” his mother said.

And he was famous for his goofball sense of humor. A friend, Jim Johnson, described him this way: “All you had to do was ask him once, and he would be up there singing karaoke.”

His twin sister, Amanda Braxton of Redding, recalled the time when he borrowed a stranger’s jet ski and took the machine for a quick tour around Lake Tahoe -- with the man’s beautiful wife still sitting on the back.

“He always created these special, funny moments,” she said. “John had a way of making good things happen even though it was done in the strangest possible way.”

That quality has come into sharp focus in the weeks since his death, as tributes have poured in to his family from friends that he made around the globe, his mother said.

He had a serious, creative side too. In recent years, he developed a passion for making small sculptures, crafting intricate shapes such as hummingbirds out of wire and tape. He also composed music.

In addition to his wife, mother and sister, Allen is survived by his father, Richard; and his brother, Adam, of Anchorage.

*

jessica.garrison@latimes.com