The oak tree on the front lawn of Transfiguration Lutheran Church on Culver Road sprouted just a few years before the British Army was surrendering to George Washington at Yorktown in 1781.
As a member of the church congregation, Bob Freese has been watching that tree since 1961.
“Every year we rake the leaves, and the tree is just … sorta there,” Freese says.
But now the tree has him stumped. According to an arborist who has examined it, the oak is feeling its age.
After 246 years, it needs an estimated $150,000 in tender loving care if it is to survive much longer. The church doesn’t have that kind of money and is trying to raise it through an online funding site.
But why? It’s just a tree, right? Future fireplace fodder.
“How many things do we have around us, that are living,” Freese asks, “that we actually can impact, that go back to the Revolutionary War?”
“We all need purpose, and taking care of things is a huge part of human purpose.”
Freese is going out on a limb here.
“It’s a tree for all of us,” he says. “And maybe we can figure out how to take care of it, which is a whole lot better than cutting it down and leaving a hole in history, and in the town.”
The first solution, a costly one, is to remove the sidewalk and replace it with permeable concrete, also known as pervious concrete, which allows water to pass through it.
More daunting is a proposal to repave the church parking lot and create an irrigation system so that water drains to the tree’s roots.
Freese says an arborist confirmed, around the time of the 1976 bicentennial, that there is only one other tree in Monroe County that has reached this startling age. And that tree is enjoying life on a golf course, away from power lines and traffic.
This is about more than landscaping. In another 54 years, Freese says, we will be celebrating the country’ 300th birthday.
“You can say it’s just a tree, just like the Declaration of Independence is just a piece of paper,” Freese says of the Culver Road oak. “However, it is a lot more than that.”
“It would probably be pretty cool that, at the United States tricentennial, people would be able to look at this tree and say, ‘This was here when all this started.’”
