By the time everyone had arrived Sunday afternoon, more than two dozen volunteers could be seen walking up and down the rows of graves at Ellsworth’s East Cemetery.

For about an hour, they checked the tombstones — one by one — stopping at those marking the resting place of a veteran. Those received wreaths adorned with small flags and red, white and blue ribbons.

“We started this last year,” said Tammy Stefek, an organizer of the local wreaths for veterans effort.

“Each year we anticipate it will grow.”

The program is sponsored by Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6485 with assistance from Auxiliary members, who spent hours placing an estimated 180 yards of ribbons on the wreaths. A year ago, volunteers planted 270 wreaths on the graves of veterans at Ellsworth’s two cemeteries.

This year, thanks to a $3,000 grant from Western Cooperative Electric of WaKeeney and Co-Bank, organizers purchased an additional 600 wreaths, enough to recognize veterans at Ellsworth, Kanopolis, Carneiro, and the Buckeye and Excelsior cemeteries. Dale Weinhold also planned to visit St. Paul’s Cemetery near Ellsworth this week with wreaths.

He said organizers hope to include cemeteries at Wilson, Holyrood and Lorraine in 2020.

“We’ve had a lot of community support for this,” Weinhold said, pointing to the number of volunteers who responded to the VFW’s call for help.

Mostly, the wreaths are placed on graves already marked as belonging to a veteran or on those the volunteer knows was in service.

Tammy Stefek said her husband, Doug, and an uncle, Lauren Paull, both veterans, have plans to create a registry to make future searches easier.