Based: Ft. Lewis, Wash.
1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division
Supporting: Operation Iraqi Freedom
Died: April 23, 2005
Mosul, Iraq
Married, 2 children
Gender: Male
Hometown: Long Beach
High School: Jordan High (Long Beach)
Burial: Rose Hills Memorial Park, Whittier
"i am the second daughter and i loved my dad even though i never met him i am 5 years old and i love him"--aniya of nevada
"i am his daughter ahlania and in the year 2010 i am 10 and i want to say i loved my dad i am thankful for knowing him and let him rest in peace"--ahlania of nevada
From the LA Times:
Anthony Jerome Davis Jr. and his wife, Michell, danced in her mother's Compton living room to the music of Marvin Gaye and Patti LaBelle shortly before the Army sergeant's October deployment to Iraq.
It was a happy moment. Michell, 20, was pregnant with the daughter who would be born two weeks after Anthony's departure. Her husband was feeling playful and "silly," laughing and smiling.
"When he smiled, his whole face lit up and everybody else couldn't help but smile too," she said.
That smile caught Michell's eye when she was just 12 and Anthony was the 13-year-old "boy next door."
"He was different; he didn't have to be like everybody else," she said.
Anthony Davis, a 22-year-old father of two from Long Beach, was killed April 23 when an explosive device detonated in Mosul, Iraq, near the eight-wheeled, armored Stryker vehicle he was in, the Department of Defense said. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team) at Ft. Lewis, Wash.
A 2001 graduate of Jordan High School in Long Beach, he enlisted in the Army the summer after graduation, when Michell was pregnant with their first daughter, Ah'lania, now 4.
The couple were married April 13, 2002. Aniya, the daughter he never met or held, was born Oct. 30, 2004.
Davis didn't tell his parents he was enlisting in the Army. When he told them that he needed their permission to finalize the paperwork because he was only 17, they tried to talk him out of it, said his mother, Charlotte Davis.
"It wasn't about going to fight for my country," she said. "But once he got in there, he tried to be all he could be. He did it initially to be able to support his family."
Davis, who played football and baseball in the neighborhood park as a child and loved his mother's "home-style" macaroni and cheese, was "smooth" and "carefree," his mother said.
"I was truly blessed," she said. "He didn't do drugs, he didn't gangbang, he didn't disrespect us, he didn't drink or smoke cigarettes. I couldn't have asked for a better son. My son is a hero, and he's my soldier, and I'll miss him."
Davis and his wife spoke frequently by Webcam. Their last conversation was two days before his death.
The conversation was brief and lighthearted, his wife said.
Read more about Army Sergeant Anthony J. Davis Jr. at Military Times, find messages and remembrances at Fallen Heroes and in Sergeant Davis' Guest Book.
Anthony J. Davis, Jr.
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