The youngest of four children, Tony J. Gonzales went along with almost anything his older sisters wanted him to do. When he was about 8 years old, he would play dress-up with them or would let them tie him to his dad’s desk chair and spin him around.

“Until he got bigger than us, he couldn’t do anything about it,” said Tammy Runzel, one of his three sisters.

Gonzales, 20, of Newman, Calif., died Dec. 28 in Sadr City when a bomb detonated near his vehicle. He was a 2006 high school graduate and was assigned to Baumholder, Germany.

“He wanted to go there to help out his country,” Runzel said. “He had such a great attitude while he was over there. He was proud of what he was doing.”

He grew up to become a perfect gentleman. His sisters said he always reached to open a door for a lady and...