James Davenport remembered

Danville, Ind. — U.S. Marine Corps Lance Cpl. James R. Davenport, 20, of Danville, had been in Iraq less than two months when he was killed last Wednesday, but family and friends say there was likely no place else he would have rather been.

Davenport, who graduated from Bethesda Christian High School in Brownsburg just last year, was one of three marines killed by a roadside bomb while on Humvee patrol in Anbar Province. He had been assigned to the Hawaii-based 3rd Marine Division, Marine Expeditionary Force, and had been in Iraq only since Sept. 13.

Davenport followed his grandfathers, father and brother into military service, but he did not go blindly. Friends said he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do and of what it might cost him to do it.

Bethesda High School teacher David Stafford taught Davenport his junior and senior years. Stafford said the young man was an average student most of the day, unless the conversation turned to the military.

“That’s when his eyes would just light up,” Stafford said. “Jimmy would say, ‘I want to be an infantryman,’ and I would ask him, ‘do you know what that means?’ And he would look at me real serious and say, ‘yes.’ He knew what it meant, but he wanted to do it anyway. He was very proud of his service.”

And his faith. When military administrators neglected to write “Christian” on his dog tags, Davenport insisted he be issued new ones immediately. And when blessed with a plethora of well-wishers to send him care packages, Davenport shared his many boxes of goodies with the marines in his barracks who hadn’t received anything.

Davenport’s mother, Tammie, said she tried hard to teach her sons the importance of public service and it showed in their actions as servicemen.

“Two weeks before he was killed he called me at 4 o’clock in the morning and we talked and talked and talked,” she said. “It was so unlike him. He hated to talk on the phone, but he did. He would never tell me any of the bad things that happened, though I know he told his dad and his brother. He would just tell me not to worry, and I would tell him, ‘say a prayer before your feet hit the floor in the morning and before your head hits the pillow every night.’”

The people closest to him were the ones that gave her son strength, Tammie said. And because he always made an effort to stay in contact, Davenport’s friends back home in Indiana often felt his touch, even from thousands of miles away.

“The first thing he did when he got to Iraq was call a friend back home and wake him up,” Tammie said with a smile. “He knew it was early, he knew he was waking him up, but he didn’t care. He was just ornery like that.”

Davenport’s father, Clifford, retires from General Motors next year, and the family then plans to move to a new 33-acre homestead in South Carolina. They have already received permission to have their son buried in a family plot on their new property, where he can remain close to the family.

Because the funeral will be conducted out of state, the family is holding a memorial service at 1 p.m. Dec. 16 at Bethesda Christian Church in Brownsburg. Services in South Carolina will be next week.

The horses and ponies Davenport and his family raised and rode will travel with them to South Carolina. Each animal brings with it a memory of him, Tammie said, such as how much her son loved animals and what a gentle and giving soul he had.

“You would have liked him, if you met him,” she said. “He was just one of those people that was so easy to like.”

From the Tribune Star

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James R. Davenport killed in combat