Gray skies threatened rain all morning, but hundreds of volunteers worked Saturday to ensure the gravesites at the Albert G. Horton Jr. Memorial Veterans Cemetery were adorned with wreaths for Christmas.

About 5,000 wreaths with red-ribbon bows were placed at the Suffolk cemetery as part of the Wreaths Across America tribute, a national observance that takes place at each veterans’ cemetery around the nation.

This is the sixth year the Horton cemetery has participated. Individuals and organizations from around the area support the effort with donations to the Horton Wreath Society, whose volunteers were joined Saturday by hundreds of others who came to help lay the wreaths at the base of each headstone.

Families of veterans buried there were among the first to be allowed to place their wreaths. As she stood quietly with her grown son looking at the marker for her husband, who died in March, Jeanne Pettersen of Virginia Beach said Maj. Louis C. Pettersen would have been pleased with Saturday’s event.

“Every year, we donated money for wreaths,” she said. “He always said he liked this cemetery.”

Horton’s peaceful setting, near lakes where her husband — a 19-year U.S. Army veteran who served in the Vietnam War — would have liked to go fishing, is a perfect final resting place for him, she said.

“It’s a wonderful place,” added her son, Tait Pettersen of Roanoke. “He would be glad to be here among his fellow service members.”

Active-duty and retired service members alike comprised a large proportion of the volunteers on hand for the ceremony.

While his three young sons held wreaths ready to place on neighboring headstones and his wife, Kristin, adjusted a wreath they’d already placed, Capt. Jake Johansson, commander of Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads, stood before a grave marker and read the details to the boys, explaining the rank and service notations etched in the stones.

“It’s important for the kids to kind of grasp the gravity of it,” he said. “We picked five (headstones) in a row and talked about … what they would have seen during their service. It’ll spur some conversation this afternoon.”

With volunteers like the Johansson family taking a deliberate approach to the laying of wreaths, the task stretched into late morning, with a full-scale ceremony including guest speakers, Echo Taps and other tributes planned to follow.

“The idea is to show respect and take a moment to honor (the deceased veterans),” Horton Wreath Society public affairs officer Gaby Morrison said.

As recently as late October, the scope of the ceremony had been in question, as society officials held a special press conference to announce that, with only days to go before the deadline to order the wreaths, they were only a little more than halfway to their fundraising goal.

But publicity about the shortfall brought a flood of help, officials said.

“We got enough donations for 5,000 wreaths,” Morrison said. “But the minute we pay for the wreaths, we start fundraising for next year.”