
LONG BEACH, Calif. — Nothing could wipe the smile off the face of Sgt. Anthony Jerome Davis Jr., his family recalled, not even the horrors of war.
“When he smiled, his whole face lit up and everybody else couldn’t help but smile, too,” said his wife, Michell.
She recalled how she saw Davis smile when she was just 12 years old and he was the 13-year-old boy next door. She saw that smile again shortly before he left for Iraq last October when they danced to the music of Marvin Gaye and Patti LaBelle in the living room of his mother’s Compton home.
And she saw it for the last time just two days before he died, when the two communicated over the Internet and he told her of singing karaoke versions of Tupac Shakur and Nelly songs with his buddies at his base in northern Iraq.
The 22-year-old father of two died April 23 in Mosul, Iraq, when an explosive...