Army Spc. Frank L. Cady III, 20, Sacramento; dies after vehicle overturns

When the Army official told Billie-Jo Hull that her son, Spc. Frank L. Cady III, had died in Iraq, she fell to the floor, screaming and sobbing.

Then, as if he were there with her, she says she heard him say, “C’mon. Get up. You promised.”

Although he was just 20, Hull said, her son always had been clear-eyed about a soldier’s risks and embraced them, expecting his family to follow suit.

Before he left for Iraq, he told her that if he died, “He wanted me not to lose it. He wanted me not to blame anybody,” Hull recalled. Then, she said, he told her: “Don’t bad-mouth the military. Don’t let nobody in the family bad-mouth the military.”

A prankster with a boyishly innocent face, he was “OK with dying,” said Hull, 35. “He knew it could happen.”

On Oct. 10, Cady was killed when the vehicle in which he was riding overturned in Baghdad, according to the Department of Defense.

The life of a soldier was the little boy’s dream that Cady never gave up. He learned to read at age 3, his mother said, and decided on the military at age 4 after he saw television news reports about Operation Desert Storm.

She recalled their conversation:

“When I grow up, I’m going to be a soldier,” he announced.

“No, you aren’t,” Hull said. “When you grow up, you’re going to be an attorney.”

Cady would not be dissuaded. He started talking to Army recruiters when he was 14, his mother said, and enlisted after graduating from Visions in Education charter school in Sacramento in 2005. But he waited until the day after his mother’s birthday that August to leave for boot camp.

He was a chemical operations specialist assigned to the 4th Special Troops Battalion, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division at Ft. Riley, Kan. He was deployed to Iraq in February.

From the start, he envisioned the Army as his lifelong employer. His mother recalled him saying, “I think when I start moving through the ranks, I will pause at Capt. Cady because that sounds cool.”

Although he was single-minded about the military, his mother and friends recalled a playful, motor-mouthed talker who was quiet only when reading a book, especially one by Dean Koontz or Stephen King.

“I used to tell him he was worse than a girl when it came to talking,” said Camille Crowninshield, whom he was dating before he was deployed.

He loved shooting pool and going to clubs, but also playing football and camping. And he’d do anything to get a laugh.

At his funeral, Crowninshield said, she half expected him “to run out from the back and say, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I got you.’ ”

A Dallas Cowboys fan, Cady would call his mother and others from Iraq to gloat when his team won.

Isaac Hays, his best friend from childhood, said Cady sometimes was disappointed about how tough life was in Iraq, but “he never regretted joining the Army at all.”

Cady even made plans to care for Hays should he not return, willing him his service uniform and making sure he got a portion of his life insurance money.

Hays, who works for a roofing company, said the money will allow him to dream a little too.

Hull said Cady called from Iraq after she sent him a CD by Billy Ray Cyrus, asking if she’d listened to the song “Some Gave All.”

“If anything happens,” she recalled him saying, “play this at my funeral.”

Hull said if she had to do it over, she still would give Cady her blessing to join the Army.

“If I have the choice of losing my son early, but him living his dream, I would rather have him live his dream,” she said.

In addition to his mother, Cady his survived by his stepfather, John Hull, and eight siblings.

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tracy.weber@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)War casualties

Total U.S. deaths*:

* In and around Iraq**: 3,837

* In and around Afghanistan***: 384

* Other locations***: 62

*Includes military and Department of Defense-employed civilian personnel killed in action and in nonhostile circumstances

**As of Friday

***As of Oct. 20

Source: Department of Defense