Rooted in memory.

Some old trees in our public spaces are long-forgotten war memorials. A look back at the movement AMERICAN FORESTS helped spawn and how it's evolved over the decades.

Look at the brittle-edged magazine articles about long-ago tree plantings, and you can't help but wonder just what those ceremonies were like. Who gave the speeches, who threw the ceremonial first shovelful of soil, did a local band play? Was anyone crying when names were read from brass markers affixed to the ground by each tree?

The year was 1919 and across the country, garden clubs, schoolchildren, towns, American Legion posts, and families were planting memorial trees. The trees--as AMERICAN FORESTS board chairman Charles Lathrop Pack so eloquently put it at the time of the November 11, 1918 armistlce--honored "the heroic dead of the Great War" with "a new form of monument--the memorial that lives."

The time was right after the Great War, the one they thought was seared deep enough in the world's conscience that it would never happen again. These men in uniform, women in furs, and little children in their Sunday best probably never imagined that there would be many, many more groves of memorial trees planted as the decades passed.

Although the memorial trees movement took on a life of its own then, Americans have for centuries used trees as a symbol. Throughout our history they have marked rebellions, tallied losses, and celebrated triumphs. From the Liberty 'frees that rallied American patriots to the national champion 'General Sherman" sequoia, trees have served as a living calendar, leaving for those who know to look for it a picture of our past as clear as any timeilne.

Thumb through old issues of American Forests, called American Forestry in the years around World War I, and you'll find page after page of memorial tree planting ceremonies. In one 1919 picture from Cincinnati, a little girl in a white dress and Mary Janes holds an American flag, her ankles pressed tightly together, as she stands next to a "Victory Oak." The accompanying story describes ceremonies like this that were taking place across the country. The girl, third grader Leona G. Van Ness, dedicated a group of memorial trees during her school's ceremony. No explanation why Leona was chosen, but the article said "Miss Annie L. Kinsella informs the Association that the little girl based her talk upon suggestions she found in three copies of American Forestry."

The same issue described the dedication of a Grove of Heroes in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, with hundreds of Wreaths of Remembrance gathered from towns and cities across California and laid on an obelisk by the Daughters of the Golden West. Then "the citizens joined in the biggest Community Sing the city had ever heard."

In Cleveland, the idea of remembering the dead with a living tribute seems to have been embraced even earlier than Pack's suggestion. In August of that year a small article titled "Trees for the Dead" described Cleveland's plans for a "Liberty Row" boulevard.

"There will be an oak tree planted there for each Clevelander who makes the supreme sacrifice. It will bear a bronze tablet inscribed with this name and military record. The planting of the trees will be made a civic ceremony in which the relatives of each hero will participate."

The subsequent memorial began at Lake Erie and ran through the cities of Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, and Shaker Heights. A July 7, 1918, article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer quoted councilman Jerry R. Zmunt as saying, "This is a splendid way of honoring our boys. It is particularly fitting that one of our finest boulevards in the city be chosen. The naming of trees after our dead heroes is the best tribute we can pay them, and their names will thus be perpetuated in a living thing."

The American Forestry article applauded the idea, saying "The trees will be, in their very greenness and robust strength, reminders of the youths who gave their vigor to win the big war There will be no gloom about them. They will stand as a continual inspiration for the living who look upon them and are sheltered by them from sun and storm." American Forestry then urged other cities nationwide to follow suit.

Now, the Cleveland Cultural Garden Federation is heading up an effort to bring back this 7-mile piece of the city's past. Working with two local metal-detecting clubs, its liberty Row Committee was able to survey two miles of the memorial road for trees and plaques before the snows began, says project coordinator Claire Kovacs. She says she found many of the approximately 262 trees still there, although some are no longer in good health. But far fewer remain of the medallions that marked each tree with the name of a hometown son lost to war. Of the 262, Kovacs says, about 35 or 40 were usable, 65 were unusable, and 162 were missing.

The liberty Row Committee is now looking for funding to pay for replacing dead or dying trees and concrete to replace the memorial plaques, as well as perhaps money for some larger signs to announce the grove. Its goal is to have the program completed by spring 2004.

The tragic events of 9-11 turned many Americans on to the idea of planting memorial trees. Many probably had no idea that the gesture is a time-worn one; unfortunately, many of those World War I memorials have been lost to time, the trees dead or uprooted, the brass plaques that marked them lost or filed away.

At Georgetown University in Washington, DC, historic records are all that remain of 54 Lombardy poplars planted there by the graduating class of 1919 to honor alumni who died in the war. Oddly enough, a year later, when the school took steps to replace one of the trees that had died, it learned that 53 memorial trees was actually just right-one of the 54 alumni previously thought dead was still alive.

Elsewhere in Washington, American Legion Post 21 became one of the first in the nation to act on the memorial tree idea, placing a maple and a bronze marker on the grounds of the Walter Reed U.S.A. General Hospital. Along the city's Sixteenth Street, the American Legion planted 507 trees, each with a bronze plaque honoring the life of a man or woman from the District who died in WWI.

A May 31, 1920, Washington Herald article described the cermony this way: "For almost three miles, on both sides of Sixteenth street, from the north line of Webster street to Alaska avenue, the long line of sturdy saplings stand as an army in double file, looking to the north where stands their leader, the beautiful maple dedicated to Edward D. Adams, the first of the comrades to fall."

In 2002, local Girl Scouts joined AMERICAN FORESTS and the American Legion to tie ribbons around the remaining Sixteenth Street trees for Memorial Day. Although some of those original trees remain, after years of neglect and vandalism, only two of the plaques are still readable.

Roads like the one in Washington were planted across the nation. Formally called Roads of Remembrance, they were another way to add beauty while very publicly paying tribute to war dead or war veterans.

Even President Warren G. Harding and First Lady Florence Harding became involved. In May of 1921 President Harding issued a statement in response to a request from the Chicago Tribune, which enthusiastically supported the memorial trees idea.

"I find myself altogether responsive to your request for an appeal to the people to plant memorial trees along the important public highways as memorials to the men who were sacrificed in the World War, and, indeed, also to those who gave their service without the ultimate sacrifice," Harding wrote. "It would be not only the testimony of our sentiments, but a means to beautify the country which these heroes have so well served.

"A general adoption of this plan would, in the coming years, be noted as one of the useful and beautiful ideas which our soldiers brought back from France."

Harding also put his muscle behind his words; a photo in the magazine showed him shoveling earth around a memorial tree planted in New York City's Central Park. Mrs. Harding was a guest at AMERICAN FORESTS tree plantings. A director of the organization, she presented a tree from the state of Ohio to AMERICAN FORESTS and planted it along a "miniature roadway" outside the organization's Washington headquarters. Tiny trees from each state were planted for passers-by to see.

American Forestry magazine honored war dead with a "National Honor Roll, Memorial Trees." Issues included in tiny type the names of the person or group planting trees and the names of those for whom they were planted.

In Arkadelphia, Arkansas, one of the more interesting plantings, a "Liberty Tree" maple, is gone now, possibly lost in a recent tornado that demolished the county courthouse on whose grounds the tree stood. The maple's roots were covered with soil gathered from "every State in the Union, from each of the Allied Countries and from other foreign places," including Izabella, at Santo Domingo, West India, the oldest settlement in the New World; from near a statue on the Capitol Grounds of Bismark, North Dakota, that honored Sakakawea, the guide for the Lewis and Clark expedition; under the old North Bridge at Concord; and from Tilloloy, France, which was near Paris and was destroyed in the war." American Forestry said.

In Portland, Maine, they till proudly point to Baxter Boulevard, where 400 linden trees were planted in 1921 as a memorial to World War I vets. The row of trees fulfills a design by the famed landscape architects the Olmstead Brothers in 1905.

At a time when the country is grieving, as happened after 9-11, the idea of planting a tree remains as simple and rich as that original call to action. In communities small and large, trees and groves represent a living tribute to those who have died in the wars since 1919.

Toward the end of World War II, AMERICAN FORESTS endorsed a slightly different form of memorial, a living memorial forest. "Such projects have the peculiar merit of flexibility; they may simply be groves of trees, or they may contain such special features as playgrounds, refreshment centers, and memorial structures. A forest may belong to a community or to an individual or a family, and as such, may commemorate the regard held for a hundred citizens, or for a son or brother."

In 1945, AMERICAN FORESTS published a "step-by-step" guide to planning and maintaining a memorial forest. The sketch of a suggested plan, which appeared in the November magazine, included a section of forest for a youth camp, wildlife sanctuary, memorial grove and amphitheater, thinning operations, athletic field, nature trail, and a clubhouse and administration building.

Blue Star Memorial Highways, initiated by the National Council of State Garden Clubs with help from state highway departments were seen as another way to honor those serving in World War II. The idea originated in New Jersey in 1944 with a "naturalistic planting of flowering dogwood along U.S. Route 22 between Mountainside and North Plainfield--a tree for every New Jersey member of the armed services."

In other states, a May 1947 article in American Forests magazine said, the look of the memorial might be different: roadsides, sylvan dells, memorial forests, horticultural study areas, bird sanctuaries.

As time passed and America became involved in other wars, the idea of memorials continued. Porterville, California, bears some of the most public scars from the Vietnam War. With the highest number of deaths per capita of any city in the U.S.--the average age of those killed was 22.4, said city employee Gil Meachum--it remembers its losses through a living memorial of 28 giant sequoias framing a Huey helicopter held aloft. The sequoias, planted in the 1980s, were given plaques with the names of the war dead as an Eagle Scout project in 1996. The city maintains the 20- to 30-foot trees and Veterans Park; veterans maintain the helicopter. "It is a special place," Meachum writes.

In Scarsdale, New York, the American Legion Memorial Garden has an admirable pedigree. Sheltered by towering trees planted in the name of fallen soldiers from World War II, it stands along Mamaroneck Road, a route used by George Washington's troops during the Revolutionary War.

The U.S. Forest Service's Memorial Projects site--where locales go to register their memorials to the victims of 9/11--describes the American Legion Memorial Garden as offering "a unique healing design with a winding path that enables the visitor to reflect in a peaceful setting. Private enclaves shelter individual handcrafted monuments depicting each American war experience."

After September 11, the nation groped for a way to express its sorrow. The idea of planting memorial trees emerged again. AMERICAN FORESTS established a plan to plant one tree for each of the heroes and victims in their respective locations: New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. The memorials are being planted with the assistance of retailer Eddie Bauer. The New York Yankees also joined in the effort, accepting the first of the New York trees for planting at Yankee Stadium. AMERICAN FORESTS will also provide the trees for a recently announced memorial at the Pentagon.

The idea of forested memorials comes full circle in San Francisco, where in 1996 the city planted a second memorial in Golden Gate Park to pay homage to the suffering of many. The first planting was its 1919 Heroes Grove for the soldiers of World War I. The second grove was established by Congress and the President as the National AIDS Memorial Grove, a place of sorrow and solace for anyone touched by the disease.

In the end, it is what tree memorials are meant to do--comfort us with their beauty, give us hope through their longevity and allow us a quiet place to grieve.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Act of Tree Planting

"My parents lived next to a wooded area, and by the time 1--the fourth child--was born, I guess they had enough of the silver spoons and porridge bowls. The story goes that my father went to the woods and brought back a pin oak sapling, which he planted next to the house in honor of my birth. It was forever known as Susie's tree, and I used to feel so tall as my tree soon towered over the three-story house.

"When my parents finally moved after 53 years in the house, I had a plaque made and my family installed it on the tree. It is there today, and fortunately, the new owners of the house like the idea of a tree as a family memento." So writes Susan Piper of California after a listserve request for information about memorial tree plantings.

What is it about the act of tree planting that makes us turn to it to commemorate the special occasions in our lives? Trees are planted in yards by proud parents and new homeowners. in restoration projects by newlyweds to honor wedding guests or by friends for big-number anniversaries.

Athletes who won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Germany were given an oak tree by Hitler. A few of those brought back to the United States and planted still survive (see page 473. Not all trees can have that impressive a lineage. Some communities have embraced notable trees within their midst, celebrating and protecting trees with local or national significance. These include trees that have been "crowned" the national champion of their species based on a formula of circumference, height, and crown spread. Others have nominated local favorites not for their size but for their connection to local history or lore. These trees are being compiled for the National Register of Historic Trees.

Some trees are both historic and just plain huge. On Maryland's Eastern Shore, no tree was more celebrated than the venerable Wye Oak, which reigned for more than 60 years as the national champion white oak. The tree, which toppled in a storm in June 2002, had been the national champion since AMERICAN FORESTS began keeping records in 1940. After its death, mourners gathered twigs and leaves, and the state launched a search for the best way to memorialize the tree. A panel recently recommended the massive trunk be returned to stand as a monument to itself.

The Wye Oak was named for the town in which it stood--tiny Wye Mills--but Americans have a curious habit of honoring people by naming trees after them. The General Sherman in Sequoia National Park is the world's largest living thing. It was so named in 1879 by admirers of the Civil War general; the species sequoia is named for the Cherokee chief Sequoyah, inventor of the Cherokee alphabet.

Another famous sequoia, the General Grant. stands in California's Kings Canyon State Park. The third largest tree in the world, it has the distinction of serving as not one but three separate memorials. Like the General Sherman, it was named for a Civil War general, one who went on to be president. President Calvin Coolidge designated it the Nation's Christmas Tree in 1926, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 proclaimed it a national shrine and living memorial to men and women who have died in service to the country. Park rangers lay a wreath on it during annual Christmas ceremonies on memory of those who gave their lives in military service.

The idea of trees as "silent witnesses" to history was first recognized in 1917. Massive tulip poplars planted by George Washington still grace the Bowling Green at his Mount Vernon estate. A magnolia that flanks the south portico of the White House was planted by President Andrew Jackson in memory of his wife Rachel, who died of a heart attack before he was sworn into office. A pin oak and white ash still stand on Court House Square at Appomattox, where Generals Lee and Grant met to negotiate the formal terms of surrender at the close of the Civil War.

Perhaps no site showcases its history better than the U.S. Capitol, on whose grounds stand more than 100 memorial trees, among them five crabapples planted for the Sullivan Brothers who died while serving together on the USS Juneau in November 1942.

Tree planting can help revive a country after a war and serve as a memorial to those restoration efforts. That's the case in Sarajevo, where AMERICAN Forests and Olympic skier Debbie Armstrong, a gold medalist at the Sarajevo games, have helped plant young trees around the city to stabilize hillsides and return the leafy canopy loved by residents before the country was racked by war in the 1990s.

Since 9-11 there has been a renewed interest in planting trees as memorials. AMERICAN FORESTS is spearheading an effort to plant at least one tree for each of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the three terrorist attacks in those locations-New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. That project, which began with a planting at Yankee Stadium in New York City, is cosponsored by retailer Eddie Bauer. Those wishing to donate can do so at www.americanforests.org or by calling 800/873-5323.

--Michelle Robbins

Standing for Defiance

Trees were seen in a new light after the summer of 1765 in Boston. As colonists' anger over the Stamp Act built, a tax official was burned in effigy from the limbs of an elm estimated to be 120 years old. The tree soon was known as the Liberty Tree and became a regular meeting place for the Sons of Liberty and other patriots. The idea was taken up by other towns throughout the colonies, and Liberty Trees--or Liberty Poles--became standard fixtures.

Those trees are all gone now. The last, Maryland's tulip poplar, which stood on the grounds of St. John's College in Annapolis, was cut down in 1999. Some of the wood from that tree was made into guitars by Taylor Guitars (see American Forests, Summer 2002). Seeds gathered from that last tree were given to AMERICAN FORESTS' Historic Tree Nursery. Tulip poplars are difficult to grow from seed, but director Jeff Meyer managed to get 14 healthy seedlings. AMERICAN FORESTS and Taylor Guitar are donating one offspring Liberty Tree to each of the original 13 colonies and hope to plant the 14th at the White House.

--Michelle Robbins

Standing for Hope

Trees didn't cease to be symbols of rebeliion when the country gained independence. It is possible to find quiet places where trees were planted as a way of sustaining hope, a thumb-in-the-eye of those who would he oppressors.

One such place is California's windswept Japanese internment camp called Manzanar. During World War II, prejudice and wartime hysteria prevailed as citizens of Japanese descent were rounded up and forced to live in relocation camps.

Located at the base of the Sierra Nevadas in eastern California, Manzanar was the first relocation center to be operated by the War Relocation Authority. Detainees did their best to make the centers homelike, which included planting fruit trees. Manzanar has since been declared a National Historic Site and is managed by the National Park Service. Some of the trees planted by detainees still grow there.

Tracking down the Olympic Oaks.

For some of America's greatest athletes, a handful of trees dubbed "Olympic Oaks" are all that remain to mark the legacy they leave behind.

During Berlin's 1936 Olympic games, seedling oaks were awarded to all gold medalists. Over the next 67 years, the U.S. team's 24 seedling trees were subjected to difficult days of anti-German sentiment, neglect, and disease. Today, only a handful remain, each living up to the motto written on its pot when it was presented: "Grow in the honor of victory! Summon to further achievement!"

They were a "gift of the German people." A Berlin gardening firm that supplied oak wreaths for the gold medalists proposed awarding the trees. Although Adolf Hitler did not actually present the trees, the nickname "Hitler Trees" stuck and many of the plaques and markers were removed during WWII because of anti-German sentiment.

The oaks were planted in special soil, treated against disease, and tended carefully during cultivation, according to a report at the time. However, it said, most were in a "sorry state" when released from quarantine back in America.

JESSE OWENS' TREES

On August 9, 1936, Olympian Jesse Owens received his fourth gold medal. The Olympic legend received three trees for his individual wins and one for his role on a relay team. In a 1964 documentary Owens said two were in Cleveland, one at his mother's, the other at a local high school; the third stands on All American Row at Ohio State University (OSU); the fourth grows at University of Southern California.

At least two are still alive. "Yes, the tree is still alive, and it's doing beautifully"' says Myra Stone, librarian at Cleveland's James Ford Rhodes High School. "I pass it every morning, in the courtyard by the football field." In 1972 Owens visited the school where he practiced track as a boy, and had his picture taken with his tree. Owens died in 1980.

The tree at Ohio State University remains a mystery. "As far I know, the tree is here and still alive, but there is some controversy surrounding the tree," says Mary Lu Trejo, a library associate for OSU. "There's an old oak growing right by my window here at the library that many claim to be a Jesse Owen's tree, but there's no plaque. We don't know for sure."

In 2000, OSU's school paper quoted Marlene Owens-Rankin as saying, "My father intended to plant them in places that were extremely meaningful to him; that's why he chose to plant one at Ohio State. There is one there. If there's not, it's not because it was not planted there."

FRANK LEWIS' TREE

Among the other Americans bringing home gold, and therefore a tree, was Frank Lewis, America's only gold medal wrestler that year. Myron Roderick, president of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, says Lewis' tree was planted at his Sigma Chi fraternity house after it outgrew Oklahoma State University's greenhouse. The tree disappeared when the fraternity rebuilt its house shortly after Lewis' death in 1998, he said.

JOHN WOODRUFF'S TREE

The tree given to John Woodruff, an 800-meter gold medalist, is "still growing strong" in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, at his high school's library. Woodruff is the only surviving gold medalist of the 1936 Berlin games. At age 88, he lives in New Jersey now and returns to Connellsville every summer to be the official starter and trophies presenter at the John Woodruff 5-K Run and Walk, established in his honor.

OLYMPIC LEGACIES

Still standing on the University of Southern California campus is the tree of the late record-breaking discus thrower Ken Carpenter. A replacement has also been planted there for the tree awarded the record-setting relay team of Owens, Ralph Metcalf, Frank Wykoff, and Foy Draper. Draper was declared missing in action in World War II, and the tree, which honored him, was accidentally killed during a construction project.

The gold medal trees of Helen Stephens of St. Louis and Forest "Spec" Towns were not so fortunate. Stephens, a double gold medalist, amazed the German dictator with her astonishing speed in the 100 meters. She planted one of her oaks at her alma mater, William Woods College in Fulton, Missouri. After its death in 1981, the tree was cut into several large pieces and one given to the Olympic Hall of Fame in Colorado Springs. Towns, a former gold medal hurdler from Athens, Georgia, had his tree planted at the University of Georgia campus, but it too died in the 1980s.

Stephens' second tree and those of the women's 400 meter relay team and eight-oared shell rowing team have since died. Diver Marshall Wayne's tree was never returned after quarantine. Hurdler Glenn Hardin did not bring his oak back home; swimmer Aldolph Kiefer's did not survive the return trip. The status of the remaining 12 Olympic Oaks is unknown.

But the oaks that remain continue to honor those amazing athletes from the 1936 games. They serve as an inspiration to athletes who would follow in the footsteps of those Olympians for years to come.

Rachel Brittin

Michelle Bobbins is editor of American Forests.