NARRAGANSETT -- Navy Lt. j. g. Francis L. Toner IV loved people, his country and God. Stationed in northern Afghanistan, he always asked for shoes and clothes for the poorest Afghan children when he wrote or phoned home.

He taught them how to play softball, too, before an insurgent dressed as an Afghan soldier killed him and a fellow naval officer Friday.

The insurgent shot Toner and Navy nurse Lt. Florence B. Choe, 35, of El Cajon, Calif., killing them both, the Defense Department said. Toner, in Afghanistan for five months, worked as a garrison engineer at Camp Shaheen in Mazar-e-Sharif.

The 26-year-old Narragansett man had been scheduled to come home on leave this week. He had planned to rejoin his wife, Brooke, in Pocatello, Idaho, where she was staying with her relatives.

He dreamed of coming back to Rhode Island where he could work with his father, buying and selling rehabbed homes.

“He’ll be sorely missed,” his father, Frank, said yesterday.

Family members gathered at the Toner home in Anawan Cliffs to remember “Frankie.” They want to hold a funeral service at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, on Long Island, where Toner went to school. He will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Toner, a 2001 graduate of Westlake High School, in the Los Angeles suburb of Westlake Village, was a star running back for the school’s championship football team.

The rugged youth was named homecoming king his senior year. More than 2,000 girls voted for him, Sharon, his stepmother said.

He loved the beach, snowboarding and racing his BMX bike as a kid.

While he was still in high school, several football scouts from the Merchant Marine Academy spotted Toner walking into the coach’s office. “He had these huge calves,” said his father. “The academy coaches asked, ‘Who’s he?’ They invited us to dinner.”

Toner studied engineering and played football at the academy, about 20 miles east of New York City. While there, he decided to join the Navy, and he fell in love with Brooke, a student from Idaho. The two married on a ship in San Diego harbor. Frank, Toner’s father, was best man.

When Toner graduated in 2006, President George W. Bush, at the graduation ceremony, shook his hand.

The Toners moved to Narragansett, to be near family in Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. Frankie called Rhode Island home for more than a dozen years.

“We never fought,” said his sister, Amanda. “He never raised his voice. He was the perfect brother.”

He was also thoughtful.

In letters and phone calls, he always asked for things for the Afghan children. “He couldn’t believe the poverty,” said Sharon. “He’d see kids who weren’t in school, or who were improperly dressed, and his heart went out to them.”

In late December, he asked the officers at Camp Shaheen to fly the American flag in honor of his little brother, John, who had just turned 9. Toner mailed the folded flag to John, along with a birthday greeting.

“I hope you enjoy and respect this flag that was flown in your honor over a country at war,” he wrote.

At the bottom of the greeting, he added a final thought. “Wish I could be there to give this to you. But I’ll be home before you know it and it will be like I never left.”