Correction: A quote at the end of this article was misattributed to Cathy Dormaier; the correct attribution is to Margie Schoenhofen, Jr. The article has been updated.

It was a heart-warming ceremony at the Enumclaw Senior Center last week, when local veterans were honored with hand-made quilts.

The early Veteran’s Day celebration was organized by the Plateau Quilts of Comfort Quilters, a tight-knit group of local quilters who make more than 200 quilts a year to give not only to Plateau-area veterans, but also vets making their Honor Flight and those who walk the Pacific Crest Trail.

“It is our pleasure and honor to make these quilts for veterans,” said Cathy Dormaier, who was filling in for group leader Norma Sorger at the event. “It is the least we can do to thank our veterans and their families for the sacrifices they made and for the veterans’ service to our country.”

The Senior Center was lively on Nov. 5, and if any seats were empty, that was because their occupants were up dancing to the Hokey Pokey or the Cha-Cha Slide.

But when the music died down, it was time to celebrate the men and women of the hour.

One by one, more than two dozen vets came to the front to share their experience in the military, ranging from Desert Storm to WWII and everything in-between.

Steve Bigger signed on to the Navy in 1951 when he quit high school join the Korean War effort.

“It was just the thing to do,” he said in a later interview. “We needed people in the service at the time… to fight communism.”

During his two decades of service, 14 of which he spent as a jet mechanic, he worked on F2H Banshees (which was used in the Korean War), and its successors, the F3H Demon and the supersonic jet interceptor Fh4 Phantom, an icon of the Cold War.

Bigger said receiving the quilt was “a great experience,” and it is “well appreciated.”

Ron Griffin didn’t spend nearly as much time as Bigger in the service — only four years active and two years in reserve in the Air Force.

He joined in part because he wanted to avoid being sent to Vietnam.

“It was either [the Air Force] or the army drafted me — I would have had to gone to Vietnam as a ground pounder,” he said, using 1960s-era slang for U.S. marines sent to the front lines. “Too many of my friends went that way and didn’t come back alive.”

But as it turns out, Griffin said this was “the best thing that ever happened to me,” despite the fact that a car wreck where he was stationed in Germany put him into a coma for more than a month.

“I was what they called a ‘wild child.’ I wasn’t going anywhere,” he continued. “When I went into the Air Force… they taught me quite a lot of stuff. I’m grateful for that.”

Receiving a quilt, he said, was a humbling experience.

“It’s not something I feel like I’m worthy of, but… I received it with gratitude,” he added.

One of the quilters, Margie Schoenhofen, Jr., said she does this in part because she comes from a military family —two brothers in the Navy, as well as a son in the Navy and another in the Marines.

Making the quilts for vets “… makes me fell like I am letting them know we didn’t forget about them, they put their lives on hold to keep us free.,” she said. “When I give a quilt to someone and they get tears in their eyes it makes me say thank you and I just wanted to say thank you, you were not forgot. Sometimes I get tears also. I’m so honored to be in a group of ladies that care.”

Ron Griffin, who who served as an Air Force firefighter in Germany, was ecstatic to receive a quilt.

Joy Turner wasn’t the only woman honored for her service at the Senior Center on Nov. 5, but the former Air Force pediatric nurse was the only one to receive a quilt.