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At about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Craig man Bill Cook was sitting quietly with his wife, Lois, listening intently as a parade of local veterans delivered an emotional tribute to the bravery of America's fighting men and women.

Absent from his crisp white button-down shirt, decorated only with a bolo tie and a couple of patches, were any medals from his three-year Army service.

That wasn't the case a half-hour later.

In a moving, patriotic and surprise ceremony, Cook received nine medals, long-awaited honors awarded to him for gallant service in World War II battles.

The shirt short of decorations was a blank canvas no longer.

"I'm excited," said Cook, who wiped away tears in the wake of a thunderous applause from the crowd attending the ceremony. "I don't know how to explain it. When he got them all on me, (my shirt) was heavier."

Cook, a veteran of battles in the Philippine Islands and New Guinea, received the marksmanship badge with rifle badge, a World War II service lapel pin, a Philippine liberation ribbon, combat infantryman badge, World War II victory medal, the Asiatic Pacific campaign medal with three Bronze Stars, a good conduct medal, Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

The medals were 60 years in the making for the 81-year-old Cook, a Craig resident for the last 30 years. Lois, and the Craig Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 4265, worked behind the scenes to get Cook his medals, covert acts all unbeknownst to him.

"I had no idea this was going to happen," he said.

Cook, a Pueblo native, enlisted in the Army at 18 in July 1943. After a brief, 21-day training period, he was rolled into active service at the end of the same month.

He fought in battles in the Pacific campaign. During his service, he helped save his company's headquarters -- an act of heroism that contributed to the medals he received Saturday -- from a Japanese bombardment.

"We kind of saved (company headquarters) whenever the (Japanese) woke us up," he said. "And then we'd quiet them down with a few shots of our own."

But, his service didn't come without its cost. He took shrapnel wounds to the mouth and hip, war wounds that he eventually carried home with him, and contracted malaria while stationed in the Philippine jungle.

Cook returned home March 28, 1946.

His wife, Lois, and Bud Nelson, commander of the local VFW post, said his medals were tied up in administrative red tape over the years. Records were lost, and memories faded, but Cook's family made the effort to acquire what he'd earned in service.

"I really didn't give a thought to it, to tell you the truth," Cook said.

They enlisted the VFW to contribute to the pursuit of his long lost medals, culminating successfully in Saturday night's ceremony. And, if there was anyone more proud when Cook was officially lauded for his service, it was his loving wife, Lois.

"It was quite emotional," she said Sunday. "We both had tears. He was so proud. We both were. He's earned it. ... Bless his heart, he didn't sleep last night."

In an address leading up to Cook's medal pinning, Nelson and Bill Harding, Moffat County's veteran service officer, paid respect to the 24 million living veterans.

"Today we celebrate the blessing of liberty," Harding said, and those soldiers who bravely fought to pursue "all that is just and right ... against the on-rushing winds of tyranny."

The courage American soldiers have displayed has been passed "down across the generations" to those currently serving in dangerous lands far from their families, he said.

"Let us here this evening be lifted up by that spirit," Harding said.

With Cook fully decorated with his new medals, Nelson echoed the sentiments of those packed into the Elk's Lodge for the ceremony.

"Commander Cook, I speak for everyone here when I say, 'Thank you for your service to your country,'" he said, amidst the crowd's booming applause.