The 29-year-old Palmatier, a 1993 Lutheran High School graduate, was killed Thursday when a roadside bomb exploded into the convoy in which he was riding in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad. Palmatier, a specialist, had been in Iraq with his unit for less than a month.

The unit Palmatier belonged to - the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division based in Fort Benning, Ga. - replaced another that was rotating out.

"He was a sweetie. He was very much someone who stepped to his own drummer," Jacob's father, David Palmatier of Springfield, said Friday.

"Like deciding he was going to take a year off before he went to college or like when he came back from Korea, he shipped home seven guitars that he'd bought over there."

Jacob was interested in everything, according to his dad, which might explain why he had a hard time choosing a career path. As a child, he read all the volumes of a set of encyclopedias his parents bought him.

"When he was younger, maybe 3 or 4, his idea was that he'd just seen this Bible story in Sunday school, and he wanted to be a shepherd," his father said.

At Illinois College in Jacksonville, from which Jacob graduated in 1998, he triple-majored at first in music, English and history.

"He had to pare down" his majors, David said. "He had to make music incidental."

After college, the younger Palmatier went to graduate school, but quit after a year to take a job at the Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety, where he worked nights as an emergency response officer.

"That means he sits and waits for telephone calls, checks up on the various places," David said. "He knew what he was doing was not what he wanted to do."

David and his wife, Margaret, always thought their son would be a writer or maybe an English professor.

"He wrote lots of different stories, usually funny. He had a quirky sense of humor that came out in his writing. He was the sort who loved Monty Python," David said. "He taught himself to play guitar and trumpet and clarinet and half a dozen other things. He'd go out and buy one and try it."

Instead of writing or becoming a lawyer or going back to school, Jacob and his soon-to-be wife, Bridget Hendrickson of Rochester, came home in March 2002 and told his parents he was joining the Army. At 26, Jacob was only months away from being too old for the Army to accept as a volunteer.

"We were stunned," David recalled. "He said it was something he always wanted to do. It was something he had to do. He said, 'Mom, I think you better sit down.'"

His parents initially tried to talk Jacob out of the idea, but "when he gets his mind on something, he does what he wants to do," David said.

Jacob went to Fort Benning for basic training and was shipped off to South Korea in November 2002. He married Hendrickson after coming back from Korea in December 2003. Some members of his unit were shipped to Iraq last year, but because Jacob worked in an office, the Army did not expect to send him.

His family last saw him at Christmas.

"I was not happy about him going to Iraq. Obviously, his mother was not happy about it," David said. "We had been told his hardship duty would be in Korea and that was all he would have to do. Then President Bush decided to send everybody."

The family plans to travel to Georgia today to be with Jacob's wife.

Pat Russell of Springfield, Jacob's best friend - the two had known each other since they were 8 - said Jacob's perspective rubbed off on him.

"Jacob, from the get-go, he was a very unique individual," Russell said. "He was responsible for my sense of humor. His outlook on life taught me how to be myself. He got me into a lot of things I never would have gotten into."

Like music. In high school, Jacob and Russell started their own band - Russell was lead singer, and Jacob played guitar - called I, Riejah.

"It means 'Cool God' in Jamaican. It was a horrible name," Russell said, chuckling. "Jacob was weird. He did it his own way. It was one of those things, 'OK, Jacob, all right, we'll go with it.' Our big thing was, we'd never tell what it meant."

Russell, too, was surprised when his best friend joined the Army.

"Jacob always had an idea of what he wanted to do. He wanted to be a lawyer. He wanted to be a chef. All of a sudden, he thought of the Army," Russell said. "On a whim, he went into the recruiter. They kind of sink their teeth in you. Especially when you're on your own. I didn't agree with it at all."

Nevertheless, Jacob was comfortable and made friends wherever he went, Russell said.

"He was content in it. He had toyed with the idea of re-enlisting. But none of us were going to let him do that, his wife most of all," Russell said.

When Jacob came back from Korea, Russell thought his friend would finally be in a safe place at a safe job and would get out of the Army when his tour was over.

"We were lucky to have him for a month at Christmas," Russell said. "It was the worst fear that we had is that he wouldn't come back. He was there less than a month and this happened.

"We even thought it was going to be an office job. But I guess it was his turn to ride in the convoy."