1st Lt. Jeremy E. Ray, 26, died early Thursday in Kanaan when a man wearing an explosives vest blew himself up while U.S. soldiers were doing a security check at a city council meeting.

"He was a good guy," 1st Lt. Charlie Huey, 26, who is stationed at Fort Hood with the field artillery unit, said in a story in Saturday's online edition of the Houston Chronicle. "He played his guitar a lot. He was kind of a quiet guy, the type of guy you'd want to hang out with."

Ray, a Houston native, was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment at Fort Hood.

He was a member of the Corps of Cadets H-1 unit at Texas A&M and graduated in 2006. He deployed to Iraq for the first time Nov. 8.

"We received three e-mails from him while he was over there," his father, Randy Ray, told the newspaper. "He was just saying that he really couldn't tell us where he was, but that they were somewhere in northern Iraq, setting up a forward operation base called 'Warhorse."'

Huey, who roomed with Ray at A&M, said that even though Ray had a quiet side, he wasn't a pushover.

He recalled what happened when some freshmen left a dead rat outside a house where they were staying.

"[Ray] found out who did it and we went over to the Corps' room at the dorm," Huey said. "We went inside and had a 'discussion' with them. After that, we never had a problem with them again."

Randy Ray said the news of his son's death was still sinking in.

"I don't have any feeling. I'm just very numb," he said. "I have a lot of inner feelings pent up about the war."

Ray said he and his wife, Deborah, had a constant stream of well-wishers at their home.

"The phone's been ringing off the hook," he said.

At least 17 men and women with ties to the Brazos Valley have died while serving the U.S. since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003.

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