DEEP-ROOTED SPIRIT GIRL'S MEMORY LIVES ON IN TREE.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

It was a scrawny, little Christmas tree, barely shoulder high to the eighth-grade kids gathered around it six years ago crying softly.

They had just lost a popular classmate, Danielle Roth, in a car crash, and nothing was safe anymore - nothing would be taken for granted again.

Their childhood innocence had died with their friend, and now they stood around a scrawny, little Christmas tree crying softly, and promising that her memory would live forever in this place.

Danielle's classmates are young adults now. Many of them, like 20- year-old Joey Eckard, are in college.

And that little Christmas tree they planted back in 1995 in front of the cafeteria at Sutter Middle School in Danielle's memory?

Well, it's grown to be tall and beautiful - the centerpiece on this Winnetka campus where every graduating class comes to decorate it at Christmastime, and lay corsages, flowers and balloons at its trunk every graduation.

A gathering place where class after class has sat and let Angelina Ochoa, a longtime teacher's aide at Sutter, tell them the story about how it came to be planted here.

Danielle Roth is still right here, her memory and spirit living in this tree to remind every student coming after her to take nothing for granted.

So enjoy your life and tell your parents and the people you love that you love them today. Because tomorrow may be too late.

``Danielle's an inspiration for every student coming through Sutter,'' Ochoa says. ``They ask me about her, and I tell them she was a beautiful girl and an excellent student who had an accident and died.

``Sometimes they can't understand that, and want to know more, so we sit and talk about how precious life is, and how it can end so suddenly - so enjoy it and tell your family that you love them,'' she said.

Danielle was on her way to softball practice when the car she was riding in was hit broadside, and she was killed. More than 700 people attended her funeral, a testimony to what a wonderful kid she was.

Until this week, Tami Roth, Danielle's mother, could never bring herself to return to her daughter's old middle school where a tree had been planted in her memory.

But Ochoa and Sutter PTA President Ellen Echard prevailed upon their old friend to come see how big and beautiful that little Christmas tree had grown, and how the Gold Rush homeroom class of 2001 had decorated it in honor of Danielle.

There were tears. There had to be tears, and plenty of emotion as the women hugged in front of Danielle's tree, while young Joey, a classmate of Danielle's, put some flowers by the tree.

``It's a happy tree, isn't it?'' Tami asked. Angelina and Ellen said yes, it was a very happy tree.

That was good, because her daughter was always so happy and full of life, Tami said.

``I'm just so moved that Danielle's memory has been kept alive here all these years,'' she said. ``It tells my family that she made an impression on so many people and her spirit keeps on going.''

Then Tami asked her old friends for one more thing - a promise.

``Please, keep telling all the kids coming through this school to love one another and their parents because life is so tenuous,'' she said.

Yes, they would, Angelina and Ellen said - right here at Danielle's Christmas tree.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Tami Roth, right, speaks with Angelina Ochoa about a school tree planted in memory of Roth's late daughter, Danielle.

(2 -- color) Danielle Roth died in a car crash in 1995.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer