Billy B. Farris dies of injuries from I.E.D.

Billy B. Farris, a 20-year-old soldier from the Gila River Indian Community, was remembered Friday as a likeable jokester with a ready smile and a fallen war hero after a bomb exploded by his vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq.

"He was a good student and he was a jokester, he had good friends all throughout high school," said Sister Martha Carpenter, a nun at St. Peter Indian Mission School in Bapchule between Chandler and Casa Grande who has known Farris and his family since he was 5 years old.

Farris is among 2,925 U.S. soldiers who had died in the Iraqi war as of Friday, 8 a.m. Phoenix time.

Flags throughout the Gila River Indian Community are flying at half-mast in his honor.

Farris was killed Sunday after an improvised explosive devise detonated while he was conducting escort operations.

"We're deeply affected by his death," Carpenter said. "His mother called us Sunday when she found out."

Farris' parents, Liz and Larry Anton, still live behind the mission in Farris' childhood home. His younger brother, Thomas Anton, attends the school where Farris also went.

"He (Thomas) knows his brother was a hero, and he's taking it very hard," Carpenter said.

Farris, who enlisted in the Army in July 2004 after graduating from high school, was a corporal in a battalion that was sent to Iraq in June. He called home every week to update his family on his whereabouts and the war.

"Thomas would tell us what he was doing, and just last Thursday, he said his whole unit was going up to Baghdad. When we heard about all these roadside bombings, we were worried," Carpenter said.

"Now those bombings have a face, and the war has become much more personal."

Attempts to reach Farris' family for this story were unsuccessful Friday.

"In their culture, mourning is a private matter," Carpenter said. "It's not something you do in public."

She said that Thomas helped dig a grave for his brother earlier this week. Funeral arrangements are pending.

"He comes from a very patriotic family. The Gila River people, the Pima people are very patriotic," Carpenter said.

Although Farris was born in Wyoming as a Cheyenne-Arapaho Indian, he moved the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona when he was 2.

"I call Billy a son of Gila River. He knows the songs, traditions and customs better than a lot of people," Carpenter said.

And he never forgot his ties to the mission, she said. He often came to the school and rode around on a golf cart helping a maintenance worker pick up trash on the playground.

"It's just hard to believe he's not here," Carpenter said.

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