Hugh Neeld: The Curmudgeon Report

Although April 25th is officially National Arbor Day, Tyler had a small celebration event the first week in March. Since it was followed by a respectable snowfall, I thought it a trifle premature. I can hear most of you now: “So? “Arbor what? Big deal!” Allow me to explain a bit about Arbor Day, and hopefully foster more respect for this event.

Arbor Day was the brainchild of J. Sterling Morton. The J stood for Julius, but he was always known as Sterling. You may never have heard of him, but you have heard of the company that one of his sons owned. It was called Morton Salt.

Born in Adams, N.Y., on April 22, 1832 and raised in Monroe, Mich., Sterling headed west in 1854 to Nebraska Territory. A year after his arrival, he became editor of the Nebraska City News, got married, and built a big house on 160 acres. The house was a mansion, but lacked one little detail: trees and plants. It was basically 160 acres of nothing.

Back then the land wasn’t well-suited for farming and trees, but that didn’t discourage the Mortons. They planted trees, shrubs, and flowers all over the place. Sterling spread the word about his tree planting to his readers and encouraged them to do the same. Not only did the trees beautify the landscape, he proclaimed, but blocked the high winds and sun, and provided wood for fuel and construction.

Sterling entered politics and was appointed by President Buchanan as secretary and acting governor of the Nebraska Territory. He later lost a bid to become the state’s first governor and threw himself into promoting agriculture. One of his major goals was to establish an annual statewide day for planting trees.

The new holiday, first celebrated on April 10, 1872, was called (drum roll, please) Arbor Day. At the risk of being tacky, let me mention that there are some dim bulbs out there wondering who Arbor was and why name a tree-planting holiday after him. Arbor, of course, was not a person, but a word from the Latin term for “tree.” Simple enough.

Today we have holidays for everything. Secretary’s Day, Grandparents Day, Breathe Asbestos Day—don’t laugh. Last year there was serious consideration of making my birthday a national holiday (serious to me anyway). Arbor Day might have been just another reason for Hallmark to sell cards, but on that first one, over a million trees were planted in Nebraska. Within 16 years, a total of 350 million had been planted. This was at a time when the entire state population was less than a half-million people. Arbor Day was signed into law in Nebraska in 1858 and the date was changed to April 22nd in honor of J. Sterling Morton’s birthday.

Morton never pushed for Arbor Day beyond his own state. That was done by Birdsey Norton, a conservationist, who wanted it to be a part of every child’s education. Within 10 years of the first national Arbor Day, schools everywhere were celebrating the day with parades, music, tree dedication, and tree-planting—the kind of Arbor Day celebration I remember as a kid.

Over time, Arbor Day almost disappeared from our holiday landscape. The holiday had been so successful that most of our depleted forests had been replenished. In the early 20th century, the government promoted something called “Good Roads Arbor Day,” a thinly-disguised scheme to pave over the American landscape. The hidden meaning was: Chop down 10,000 trees for this new highway and plant a couple of new ones over there. Today, Arbor Day has been watered down to basically nothing. What was once an entire week of activities is now short and low-key. They still have a ceremony—a couple of boring speeches, then seniors and teachers are given a small shovel to plant a tree, and Arbor Day is over.

If you’re one of those people looking to restore tradition in America’s schools, why don’t you propose that they celebrate Arbor Day the way it used to be celebrated? Start out small and let it grow over the years, like the trees. Let’s face it, there’s nothing wrong with planting a few trees and having a good time.

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A question to ponder:

Why do we forget what we’re taught but remember what we learn?

putterhugh@suddenlink.net

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Hugh Neeld is a freelance columnist for TylerPaper.com.

Hugh Neeld is a freelance columnist for TylerPaper.com.
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