FORT LEWIS, Wash. -- The Department of Defense on Monday announced the deaths of four soldiers with ties to Washington State.

The Army said three soldiers assigned to a Stryker Brigade based at Fort Lewis were killed over the weekend in Iraq, and a soldier from Spangle, Wash. was killed on June 2.

The department said Monday that the Fort Lewis-based dead are:

- Army Staff Sgt. Brian M. Long, 32, Burns, Wyo.; killed Sunday in Baghdad by an explosive; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team)

- Army Pvt. Scott A. Miller, 20, Casper, Wyo.; killed Saturday in Baqouba by small-arms fire; assigned to the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team).

- Army Sgt. Cory M. Endlich, 23, Massillon, Ohio; killed Saturday in Taji by small-arms fire; assigned to the 2nd Squadron, 1st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team).

Killed June 2 by an explosive in Sharqat, Iraq, was Army Sgt. Dariek E. Dehn, 32, of Spangle, a small town south of Spokane. He was assigned to the 6th Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division out of Fort Hood.

Long, a former sailor who most recently lived in Roy, near Fort Lewis, reported to the post in December 2000 and was on his second assignment to Iraq. He leaves a wife, Brenda, and three children, Sydney, 7, Shelby, 3, and Sage, 1, the Casper Star-Tribune of Casper, Wyo., reported.

He regularly used a satellite link to read to his children before bed, relatives told the newspaper.

"He was a good daddy, and a good husband and a good son," said his mother, Lynn Curtis of Burns. "You couldn't ask for anybody better."

Curtiss said the last thing he sent her was a photograph showing him handing a teddy bear to a young girl whose father, an Iraqi policeman, had died in the fighting.

"He wrote that he was trying to make a little bit of a difference over there, and he hoped to go fishing with me when he got home," his mother said.

Miller received his diploma from Natrona County, Wyo., High School - the alma mater of Vice President Dick Cheney- in 2004, then enlisted in the Army in 2004 and reported to Fort Lewis later that year, eventually becoming a sniper, according to the Pentagon.

Miller "liked serving in the Army, but he didn't like where he was," said his father, Robert Miller of Casper.

His grandmother, Mary Harris, told the Star-Tribune he enjoyed eating, hunting for deer, antelope and elk and taking her out to dinner, including a splurge at a Red Lobster when he was home on leave in March.

"Nobody, nobody wants to bury their children. Children are to bury us," Harris said. "It's incomprehensible, and it's the mystery of life."

Endlich, a 2003 graduate of Washington High School in Massillon, "felt the war was justified and wanted to be there," his father, Randy Endlich, said.

"I am very proud of him and the job he was doing. He was a giver. He would do anything for just about anybody," his father said. "Anyone would be proud to call him a son. (No one) knows how much he will be missed."

In high school, Endlich played tuba with the Massillon Tiger Swing Band and ran cross country. He worked at a local Dairy Queen, where the message board outside the restaurant was changed to "CORY ENDLICH, OUR HERO, YOU WILL BE MISSED."

Dehn grew up as the five of six children in rural Spokane County and enlisted in the Army six years ago, said his sister, Sherri Jeske.

"The Army formed a direction for him, he was really proud of being a soldier," she said.

Dehn was deployed for about a year to Korea, where he met his wife, then came back to U.S. before being sent to Iraq.

During a visit home on leave several weeks ago, he told close relatives about the danger of military service in Iraq and some close calls he'd had, Jeske said.

"That was kind of his way of preparing if something was to happen," hi sister said. "We were just thankful to spend the time that we did with him."