Jonathan Roy Kephart was born on September 2, 1982, in Valparaiso, Porter County, Indiana. After graduating from Faith Baptist Academy in 2000, he attended the school's School of Theology in Seneca and worked as a painter before enlisting in the United States Army in December 2001. Choosing the Military Police Corps to become a police officer after his military service, he was assigned in June 2002 to the 230th Military Police Company in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He was later deployed to Iraq to support Operation Iraqi Freedom.

On April 8, 2004, Spc Kephart died from wounds sustained during a convoy escort mission north of Baghdad, Iraq, when insurgents attacked his patrol with rocket-propelled grenades. During the engagement, he continued fighting after exhausting the ammunition for his .50-caliber machine gun, using additional weapons to defend his fellow soldiers and helping save the lives of the other occupants of his Humvee. He is now buried in the Brandon Cemetery, Brandon, Venango County, Pennsylvania, USA.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com, thefallen.militarytimes.com