About 50 volunteers spent part of their afternoon removing the wreaths from Veterans Plot in Woodland Cemetery on an unseasonably warm day Saturday.

The wreaths are placed on the third Saturday of December, a tradition of the national Arlington Cemetery ceremony, which was brought to the Ironton Woodland Cemetery four years ago by organizers Juanita Southers and Linda Dalton.

“We always take them down on the third Saturday of January, five weeks after we put them up,” Southers said. “Volunteers pile all of the wreaths up, and the cemetery workers will haul them away for us.”

The event started out with the wreaths being placed on the second Saturday of December and being picked up on the second Saturday of January. However, the past two years have been changed to the third week of the months.

This year, Woodland Cemetery plans to use the wreaths to fill some eroded areas of the cemetery.

Dalton’s husband, Leon Dalton, thanked all of the volunteers for helping out the cause and concluded the wreath removal with a prayer.