Sgt. Ivory L. Phipps wanted to talk to his 5-month-old son Sunday when he called from Kuwait. So his fiance put Elijah on the phone and watched their infant son gurgle with glee.
“Whatever he said to the baby, it obviously had him excited and it brightened his day,” said Phipps’ fiance, LaToya Ragsdale, 30, of Chicago. “And once the baby got to making his sounds, I didn’t want to snatch the phone from him.”
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During the three minutes of the 10-minute phone call, Phipps told his fiance he loved her and was headed to Iraq.
Phipps, 44, a driver for the 1544th Transportation Company of the Illinois Army National Guard in Downstate Paris, died Wednesday in a mortar attack at a U.S. supply base in Baghdad, said Maj. Tim Franklin, an Illinois National Guard spokesman.
He was the second Chicagoan and 22nd Illinois resident to die in the conflict. He was the third in the Illinois National Guard to die in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Pfc. Cheryl Walker, 36, of Urbana also was wounded in the attack but has been released back to her unit, Franklin said.
Phipps, who grew up on Chicago’s West Side, was the youngest of eight children and a mama’s boy, said his sister, Flora Greggs. His siblings called him “Squealy” because he always threatened to tell on them unless they paid him, his sister said.
An industrious child, he delivered newspapers, shined shoes and bagged groceries after school. He also loved the military, and played with his bags of green plastic Army men and watched war movies on television, his siblings said.
After graduating from Crane High School in 1978, he enlisted in the National Guard and served off and on for 15 years. He was in Iraq for the first Persian Gulf War and then re-enlisted in February 2003 to put in a full 20 years for retirement, Ragsdale said.
He spent most of his life working as a driver for Federal Express and UPS. Most recently, he worked for Budget Rent a Car cleaning cars, said his brother, Albert. He was told in April that he would be going to Iraq, but was able to delay his departure until after Elijah’s birth, Ragsdale said.
The family said Phipps will have a full military funeral. Services will be held March 27 in Bethlehem Healing Temple, 12 S. Oakley Blvd., Chicago.