Darius Joseph Smith was named after the biblical King Darius and the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — but the boy's heady name turned out to be incidental. Everyone called him Buddha.

Liza Smith lost the baby's twin during pregnancy, and she always considered her third child her "Lucky Buddha."

The nickname stuck as he grew, when the bald baby with a pudgy belly began to sit cross-legged like the original Buddha in his lotus position.

He loved playing with his siblings, swimming, in-line skating, scary movies and wrestling. And man, could the kid put away the pizza rolls.

A few weeks before he died, a neighbor captured Buddha on videotape playing with Autumn, Desi and a couple of children in a Magna neighborhood where the family lived. With his long "Tigger" T-shirt, curly mop of hair and untied shoes, the videotape captured activities of a perfect lazy summer day. Buddha balanced awhile on the cul-de-sac curb, then the five children took turns piling into a shopping cart and raced down the street. Later, Buddha tried to hold his own roughhousing with the bigger children.

He was a little boy with big-boy appetites. He could eat a medium cheese pizza by himself. His sister loved how he would say "Big, big, huge, huge" when he wanted a lot of something.

"Wrestling was our favorite thing to do," Autumn said in a recent interview.

When he died, he was a month into kindergarten at Lincoln Elementary School.

Buddha's life was cut short in a week in which he'd accomplished a childhood benchmark, Liza Smith said. "He'd just learned to write his own name."

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E-mail: lucy@desnews.com