Soldier is killed in explosion in Afghanistan

Jon Welch’s sixth-grade teacher had a bit of a problem with him. The energetic youngster would sit in his chair and whirl around. “She said, ‘He’s spinning circles in my classroom,’ ” his mother, Gina Storll, recalled, laughing. “He was a fun kid to be around, but he had trouble focusing on the mundane things.”

So he turned the world into his own landscape of wild exploits. Whether the prankster, the punk scenester or the guy crazy -- and half asleep -- enough to punch a bear in the face through a camping tent (the bear ran away), Welch rarely sat on the sidelines.

And he had no intention of doing that when he joined the Army, he told his family.

“That’s why he volunteered for infantry,” his mother said. “He wanted to be on the front lines.”

That’s where Army Spc. Jonathan D. Welch was Aug. 31 when a roadside bomb exploded near his unit in Shuyene Sufia in southern Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, on the Pakistani border.

Welch, 19, who was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 5th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division at Ft. Lewis, Wash., was one of two soldiers killed in the attack. His unit had been deployed barely two months.

“He talked to us about how he might not make it through this,” Storll said. “We’ve been a pretty strong Christian family. He said, ‘I want you guys to know I squared things away with God.’ ”

It took most of Welch’s short life for him to become so centered.

Growing up all over Orange County before his family settled in Yorba Linda, he questioned everything, his mother said.

“Jon was never ‘God is good,’ ” she said. “He would have to question me on everything -- ‘Why do you think God is good?’ ”

The former Gina Welch was pregnant with Jon when her friendship with Ben Storll blossomed into something stronger. She gave her baby her maiden name, then married Storll when Jon was 3 months old. “He grew up as a Storll,” she said.

He was fearless if not always wise. He was an adventurer by all accounts. And even for his ill-conceived adventures, he found plenty of friends willing to join in.

“He had a magnetic personality,” said his sister, Mary Storll, 16.

He dropped out of Esperanza High in Anaheim during his sophomore year, according to family members. At 16, he ran away for two weeks only to be found squatting and drinking on top of a building, his siblings recalled.

After that, his parents put him in a rehab program in Mexico, his mother said, where he could kick a problem with methamphetamine. “Jon wasn’t a drug addict. He was a good kid. He was just sideways,” his mother said.

Six months later, he emerged from his rehab program, his family said, and went on to earn a general equivalency diploma and joined the Army in 2007.

“He was trying to get his life back in order,” said his brother, Danny Storll, 17. “He was trying to get his self-respect back.”

The Army didn’t lessen Welch’s love of punk music. While stationed at Ft. Lewis, he frequented Seattle clubs.

Cynthia Covington, a Navy logistics specialist, and her husband, a former Army 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper, met him one night in early 2008 at a ska concert.

“He was like, ‘Hi, I’m Spaz,’ ” Covington said. His nickname, acquired some time before, seemed to fit him as he jumped around the club talking to people, she said.

“We loved that kid almost instantly. He was completely forward with himself instead of being shy and cowering away,” she said.

The couple would drive to the base and bring him back to their home for barbecues or take him to shows.

“His motto was if you feel like you should do something, you should do it,” Covington said. “If he liked a girl, he would walk right up to her and tell her how he felt. If he didn’t like someone, he would walk right up to them and tell them.”

Welch dreamed of being part of an Army airborne unit, according to friends and family. He also seemed to have new focus.

On his last two trips home -- his final one over the Fourth of July holiday -- his mother marveled at how he had transformed himself over the years from “a squirrelly kid” to a confident person. “He figured himself out,” she said.

“The Army really helped him grow up,” said Ben Storll, a Verizon Wireless business account specialist. “My boy changed into a man. It was a pretty awesome thing to see.”

The Storlls, who now live in Citrus Heights near Sacramento, held a memorial service for Jon at Powerhouse Christian Fellowship, their former church in Irvine. Hundreds came. He is buried at Sacramento Valley National Cemetery in Dixon in Solano County.

“We thought about burying him in Orange County,” Gina Storll said. “I didn’t want to be that far away.”

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carla.hall@latimes.com