Army Spec. Ramon Candelario Ojeda, 22, died in Iraq with a fellow soldier during an ambush on May 1. They were members of the 84th Battalion, 25th Infantry Division (Light). Traveling near the southern city of Amarah, their supply convoy came under fire from Shiite militia fighters.

Ojeda was buried with military honors on May 11 at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. Edilson Elsen, pastor of the Ramona Adventist Church, was the officiating minister. During the graveside service, young people who had once been in the Ramona Pathfinder club with Ramon recited the group’s motto by which they said their friend lived his life: “By the grace of God, I will be pure, kind and true… I will be a servant of God and a friend to man.”

Ojeda joined the Church as a teenager in 1993. The son of a Vietnam veteran, he graduated from Montecito High School in 1999 and enlisted in the Army, looking forward to gaining an education and preparing for a profession.

While at Fort Riley, Kan., he met Lesliee, his future wife. Both were stationed in Hawaii before being sent to Iraq. When Ramon shipped out in January, the couple placed their young son, Angel, in the care of his parents who live in Santa Ysabel.

“He was a very lovable person,” said his father, Joaquin Ojeda. “Everybody liked him. He was a good boy. He never gave anyone any trouble.” Friends and family remember him as athletic, trim and one who relished competition.

A sister, Evangelina Ojeda of Anaheim, said her brother was especially close to their mother. “He used to run into the kitchen and grab her and kiss her on the neck and fling her around in circles,” she told Julie Tamaki, reporter for the L.A. Times.

“Ramon was a nice, quiet, gentle guy,” recalled Victor Merida, former pastor of the Ramona Church. Merida’s daughter, Monica, added, “Kids loved him and followed him around. He always stood up straight like a soldier and was very determined.”

“He talked with his father by phone just a few days before the ambush,” Elsen said. Knowing they were concerned about his safety, Ramon said, “Don’t worry about me. I could be killed just walking down the street in Ramona. If God thinks it is time for me to come home, then it’s my time.”

Ojeda is survived by his wife, Lesliee, and their son, Angel; his parents, Maria and Joaquin Ojeda; two sisters, Evangelina Ojeda and Cellia St. Germaine; and a half sister, Linda Turner.