"They found him with a gunshot wound to the chest," Athena Spencer said yesterday from her parents' home in Orange County, Calif. "It was clearly from someone else. They said, 'Don't make any speculations that it was or wasn't another Marine.' They said it was nonhostile. It wasn't an enemy, but they said that could change."
The Department of Defense would only say that Spencer's death occurred from "a nonhostile incident" that is under investigation.
Spencer reported to Hawai'i in January 2007 as a rifleman assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, at Kane'ohe Bay.
His father had served in the Navy and Spencer joined the Marines at age 17, right after graduating from high school in Southern California in 2006.
"He wanted to be Marine infantry because they say it's the hardest thing to do," Athena said. "He wanted to protect his country."
Ray and Athena were introduced by friends via phone and e-mail. Their communications turned to romance during Spencer's first deployment to Iraq from August 2007 to February 2008. They met face-to-face for the first time in April 2008 and were married on June 18.
Photo: Ray and Athena Spencer
They were 20-year-old newlyweds who lived in a small studio apartment in Enchanted Lake in Kailua until Spencer shipped out this month for his second deployment to Iraq.
"He's just a genuinely sweet person," Athena said. "He respects women and people in general. He's never the type of guy to be rude. He was so polite and laid back, never aggressive."
His death has stunned the small town of Ridgecrest, a community of 28,000 people in the high desert of Southern California that has only one high school, Burroughs High School, according to Jim Selle, Burroughs' senior naval science instructor who taught Spencer as a Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps Navy cadet.
Spencer is the first Burroughs graduate to die in Iraq or Afghanistan, Selle said.
"It's a small town where everybody knows everybody," Selle said. "It's definitely got people talking."
The school plans a ceremony tomorrow in which cadets will lower the U.S. flag to half-staff and fire a cannon in Spencer's honor.
"He was a tall skinny kid who always had a smile on his face," Selle said. "I don't think I ever saw him without one. He came in and wanted to be a Marine and he was going to be a Marine. He achieved his goal."
Another of Spencer's JROTC instructors, George Anderson, said Spencer had a great sense of humor, blended with natural leadership.
"He was a very charismatic young man," Anderson said. "He could get his students to follow him into the jaws of death, which they would have ignored from other students."
==Another news story==
Bakersfield Californian - ưA U.S. Marine from eastern Kern County has lost his life in a non-combat incident in Iraq, just two weeks after his deployment.
Lance Cpl. Ray A. Spencer II, 20, of Ridgecrest, died April 16 in Anbar province, according to a release from the Department of Defense.
The incident is under investigation, and few other details of Spencer's death have been released by the military, not even to his young widow, Athena Spencer.
"They've told us probably as much as they've told you," Mrs. Spencer said Tuesday from her home in Anaheim. "It was on base, so it wasn't combat."
Mrs. Spencer was told by a friend that her husband died from a gunshot wound, but that information has not been confirmed by military authorities.
SHOCK AND LOSS
When two uniformed Marines arrived at her home last week, Athena Spencer's world came crashing down.
"When I went to the door, I knew," she said.
Through her tears and confusion, she first thought it was some kind of terrible joke.
"Anthony," as she called her husband, had dreamed of joining the Marines since he was a little boy.
Not long before his death, he sent his wife a bouquet of white lilies for Easter.
"He was hoping to make a career in the Marines," Mrs. Spencer said.
KERN COUNTY ROOTS
Spencer, a 2006 graduate of Burroughs High School in Ridgecrest, was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division, Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
Burroughs High Assistant Principal Bryan Auld remembered Spencer as an active and "focused" member of the school's Junior ROTC program. On Thursday, ROTC members will hold a tribute to Spencer on the Ridgecrest campus.
Retired assistant ROTC instructor George Anderson remembered Spencer as a "natural leader among the students."
"He had a great smile and a great sense of humor that probably got him into trouble at times," Anderson said from his home in Ridgecrest.
But he had a charisma that others recognized.
Ray Spencer was intent on joining the Marines after graduating from high school, Anderson said.
"We spend a lot of time telling students there's no glory in war, that it's ugly, a thing to be avoided," he recalled. "But if someone wants to serve their country, we will do everything we can to help them."
COMING HOME
Spencer's father, a Navy veteran who lives in Ridgecrest, went to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to escort his son's remains back to California.
After a transfer ceremony Sunday, the flag-draped transfer case was flown back to California, Mrs. Spencer said.
"He just got in today," she said Tuesday.
Arlington Mortuary in Riverside will be handling the funeral. Services are tentatively scheduled for Friday.