For the 57th year since the establishment of the custom, members of the Suffield Garden Club observed Arbor Day by distributing seedling trees provided by the Club’s Vallery Gallivan Tree Fund to all the Suffield fourth grade students. And, as usual, the little trees, with their branches gathered and tied and their roots nicely bagged, were handed out at the end of a school assembly in the McAlister gym, with many parents and grandparents present to enjoy a short program and transport the trees – and their proud recipients – safely home.
This year the program was somewhat changed, with fewer live presentations from class groups and individual kids, and several video and slide presentations projected on a big screen. But a nice tradition was observed when one of the fourth graders whose grandmother was a Garden Club member came forward to receive his tree in a short ceremony during the assembly. An interesting feature of the program was a series of pictures of trees planted in earlier years by earlier fourth graders. One photo showed the impressive maple that McAlister principal Kris Pryce planted when she, herself, was a Suffield fourth grader.
Fourth grader Chase Lingenfelter accepts his little tree from Garden Club Tree Program chair Rita Chmura. His grandmother, Sharen Lingenfelter, stands at the right. In the foreground, Tree Fund Committee member Sally Peters looks back at students in the audience after taking a close-up photo.