Perhaps it was fitting that, in describing his son, Jonathan, killed in service Sunday in the gravest attack against U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in three years, Bill Ayers gave humor its due.

"I'm a more serious Christian," he said, but "I still think the perfect funeral" would open with a country song and an act by Jeff Foxworthy.

Family photo (ENLARGE)

Army Corporal Jon Ayers was 24. He died during a three-hour battle with gunmen in Afghanistan.

Todd R. McQueen /SPECIAL (ENLARGE)

Bill Ayers sings paperwork in regards to his son's funeral arrangements as Master Sergeant Patricia Dixon looks on. Dixon is a casualty assistance officer from Fort McPherson and she is helping make arrangements for the funeral of Cpl. Jon Ayers who was killed in Afghanistan during an attack Sunday that took nine U.S. lives.

(ENLARGE)

Army Corporal Jonathan R. Ayers

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"Even though [Jon] grew up on rock 'n' roll, he liked country," Ayers said, coyly. "We tried to raise him right."

It's not just that Jon loved Foxworthy, of whom he did a mean impersonation, or any of the blue-collar crew of comedians. He focused on joy and bringing it to others. "He didn't like sadness. He didn't like people to be unhappy," Ayers said, offering soft smiles when the ripples of pain appeared to momentarily leave him.

Army Corporal Jon Ayers was 24 when he was killed and due to leave Afghanistan in one week. The attack felled eight others, including one other from Georgia.

This was the period his father was most worried about – the "first month and the last month of tour is when things happen," he said, speculating that the rookies can get killed in the beginning and, by the end, people are mentally occupied with heading home.

On several occasions, Jon told his mother he didn't want to take part in the mission that ended up costing him his life. This was a larger mission than he'd undertaken before, with a group of 70 building a new operations base, and Jon was on the periphery, standing guard, Ayers said. Stationed in the 173rd Airborne, he was based in Italy and deployed to Afghanistan on May 22, with an early Christmas break last August.

"It's been the longest 15 months of our lives," he said.

"He was able to call home a lot, and that's been the best thing of all of it," Ayers said. "But every time it would get past a normal weekend or a normal time [that] he would call," Mom and Dad would rush to the "Family Readiness Group" Web site, where they'd get updates about his battalion and check out pictures of their son and his Army buddies.

Jon had looked happy. He'd be stationed behind his group's large gun, sometimes, with a smile and a childlike expression that read: "Hey, look at me!" Ayers said.

The Web site would go down when someone had been killed, while officials notified the family members of the fallen soldier, Ayers said. When the site came back up, they knew Jon was all right. It was the no-news-is-good-news rule.

Ayers was by himself at his Snellville-area home when he finally did get news — the way it's always imagined — by way of two uniformed reps at the door.

It's the "nightmare" of Army parents — to "hear the doorbell and look out and see two Army people standing there. You don't have to go to the door, you know, and it doesn't get any better from there," he said.

That was Sunday afternoon. By Wednesday, Ayers was seated in his living room, surrounded by family members, with a copy of the military's "Guide for Surviving Family Members" and a focus on getting Jon's body home.

They'd just met with the Army liaison designated to help the family through the ordeal.

They had planned a Saturday funeral service but were told they "might be rushing," he said. It's the Army's "hurry-up-and-wait," approach, said Christina Ayers, Jon's sister-in-law, who was preparing food in the kitchen.

The military wanted to properly honor Jon, whose efforts helped to save the lives of other men on the mission, Jon's father said. For his service, they'd promoted him from specialist to corporal and would be performing a 21-gun salute at the funeral.

"They were attacked on three sides" and "they weren't prepared for it," he said, relaying the report from Jon's commander who called him from Afghanistan on Tuesday morning, explaining that a coordinated group of 500 trained insurgents attacked in a three-hour-long battle. His commander had called him "very mature," a take-charge type — "he could lead the people around him."

Does he think his son's group should have been prepared? "When you're at war, things happen," Ayers said. "Sometimes it takes something like this to make us prepared." Now they realize they're fighting a serious army, not hillsmen and tribesmen, he added.

Jon's parents realized his death was "a possibility," said his mother, Suzanne. "We thought when he got deployed to Afghanistan, that that was a whole lot better than Iraq at the time."

In any case, Army service was something Jon felt he needed to do.

"He was military," Bill Ayers said. "He liked spit-and-polish type things. He would fuss at us if our shoes weren't cleaned just right," he said, with a smile at the memory.

Jon had many interests — bowling, ice skating — and he loved the Atlanta Thrashers, even worked at the rink where they practiced, Ayers said.

But pride in country seems to have been paramount.

At Shiloh High School, he became commander of Junior ROTC, earning in 2002 Georgia's "most impressive commander" honor and that same year, shepherding his group to win the state championship.

His family teased him, calling him "General JonJon."

It started as a nickname from his soccer days — there were so many other kids named Jon on the team that his family decided to set him apart with a sobriquet. He played soccer as a young kid and continued through high school. When he was only 4 years old, the coach took him out on the field and outlined the area that he was supposed to defend.

"Jon was very, very strong, and he would not let anyone through that box," his father recalled. "He pretty much always played defense, which is pretty much what he was doing till the day he died."