Joyce Sihler stood at a podium in the parking lot of American Legion Post 48 in Oxnard holding a framed black-and-white photo of her husband John, a serious-looking young man, dressed in his Air Force uniform.

It's been 28 years since John Sihler, a tech sergeant, died in a West Los Angeles veterans hospital and was laid to rest at Riverside National Cemetery, leaving Sihler the widowed mother of two teenage daughters. The loss is still fresh.

"Maybe it has been that long," Sihler, president of the Ventura chapter of Gold Star Wives, told the crowd of two dozen assembled in the parking lot. "It doesn't diminish his service to this country. I don't think he would have had it any other way."

Those who gave their lives for their country were honored around Ventura County on Monday, Memorial Day.

Hundreds of people gathered on a hillside overlooking Camarillo for the 43rd annual Memorial Day service held at Conejo Mountain Funeral Home, Memorial Park and Crematory.

In Oxnard at the American Legion Post, red paper poppies, a traditional symbol of Memorial Day, were tucked into buttonholes and tied to headbands. Plastic American flags, clutched in hands, were hoisted in the air as Teresa Estrella sang "God Bless the U.S.A."

In Camarillo at Conejo Mountain, veterans and seniors sat side by side with families with young children as American flags waved in the breeze, from full-size flags that lined the driveways to smaller ones fluttering on the graves that sloped across the green cemetery lawns, marking the final resting place of those who had served in the armed forces.

"We are stunned by the number of sacrifices," Chaplain William C.B. Lowe, Naval Base Ventura County, said in his opening invocation. "But they are brought back into reality by the memories of faces, family members and friendships."

Daphne Dunnigan from Simi Valley served in the U.S. Army for seven years and her husband, who is stationed at Fort Benning, Ga., recently completed a tour of duty in Iraq.

"I am so patriotic and I love America, and it makes me so proud every time I see a gathering of people like this," she said as she stood with her mother and young daughter.

Among those sitting in the audience in Oxnard was Virgil E. Hull, 86, dressed in his Navy dress uniform and black wraparound Ray-Ban sunglasses, his hand snapping to salute during the national anthem.

Hull joined the Navy at the age of 18, just 18 days before Pearl Harbor was bombed. The pharmacist's mate was eating breakfast in Fredericksburg, Va., when he heard the news.

"I realized now I'm in the military," Hull said of that moment. "Now I have a job to do, and I'd do it not knowing where I'm going."

He served with the Marines in the Pacific theater and left the Navy in 1946 to run a bar. It lasted for 80 days. He re-enlisted and served in the Korean War and retired from the military in 1960.

America's sons and daughters "made their deaths a barricade between our country and our foes," said Lt. Jeffery E. Turner of the Civil Engineer Corps, U.S. Navy, 30th Naval Construction Regiment, Port Hueneme, who gave the keynote address at the Camarillo service.

Throughout the memorial service, one veteran stood holding aloft a black POW/MIA flag. Despite his frailty, he never wavered during the hourlong ceremony.

Afterwards, he refused to give his name except to say that he's known as Magic and that he'd served two years, seven months and 14 days in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.

"I promised over 58,000 dead people that I'd do it," he said, explaining why he was there with the flag. "These guys never got a flag. They never got a parade. They never had a piece of ground or a headstone, and they never will. Somebody's got to do this and, unfortunately, when you look around, I'm the only one."