Ram Pasture Christmas Tree—

The Fall Of A Landmark Tree Threatens To Darken A Tradition

By Shannon Hicks

A steady stream of cars drove along Elm Drive on Sunday, as drivers and passengers looked at the tangle of splintered wood and tree branches at the southwestern corner of Hawley Pond. It was the town’s Christmas tree, laid low by a combination of high winds and lowly rot.

Some time on Saturday, March 8, the 90-plus-foot-tall spruce tree fell. Those who were visiting Ram Pasture and inspecting the remains of the tree on Sunday could not help but notice the amount of dark, rotting wood clearly visible in the tree’s trunk. From the exterior, to the untrained eye, the tree looked healthy. But its interior was filled with decay and showed its age.

Couples, friends, family members… residents who lived within sight of the celebrated tree and others who drove to Ram Pasture after hearing about the fallen tree all spoke in hushed tones as they looked at the tree which, by early Sunday afternoon, had already been stripped of its strands of lights and the star that once graced the top of the tree by Milt Adams, the head of maintenance for Newtown Cemetery Association.

Brothers Erik and Adam Secola walked from their home on Main Street South with their dog Morgan to see the tree’s remains.

“We used to be able to see the tree from our house,” Adam said. “We had heard about the tree falling and wanted to see it for ourselves.”

Elm Drive resident Gary Pearson had not heard about the tree before he was on his way into town and came across the scene unexpectedly. His face expressed the disbelief and surprise that so many others were also feeling.

The tree fell during the evening hours of Saturday, but no one seems to have seen it happen. It was noticed by members of Newtown Hook & Ladder Fire Company, who were responding to a call on Brushy Hill Road that evening.

“We were coming back from a motor vehicle accident at 9 pm and noticed it was down,” Mike McCarthy, a member of the fire company, said this week. “It fell into the pasture so we didn’t worry about it.”

Mr McCarthy, who is also Newtown’s tree warden, was not surprised to hear of the tree’s demise once he had a look at it during the daylight on Sunday.

“Nope, it was on borrowed time anyway,” Mr McCarthy said this week. “I was not involved with that tree, because it’s privately owned.” Ram Pasture is owned and maintained by Newtown Cemetery Association, a private entity.

“It’s a sad thing,” said Maureen Crick Owen, the president of the cemetery association. “It’s so pretty in there in the winter with the lights on it and everything.

“I got a call from Milton Adams on Sunday morning and was so sorry to hear that,” she added. “I guess the best part was that it fell into the pasture and not into the street.”

Because the tree fell into the pasture there was no danger to motorists, so it was not until Tuesday morning that Rob McCulloch and Jamie Shore from Newtown Tree Service, LLC went to Ram Pasture to clean up the remains. Newtown Tree has been doing work on the tree — including checking the bulbs and lighting equipment prior to the tree lighting ceremony in early December (or even late November, as it happened in 2007) – for “approximately ten years,” Mr McCulloch estimated.

“The tree looked so funny because it never really got the sunlight that it needed. In the spring, it was shaded by the hickory trees around it, so it grew funny to one side and full to the other. That’s just characteristic of those trees,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “Other than going in with a borescope, there was no way to really be able to tell it had been so sick. In my opinion, I think it just really grew funny because it never really got light and the treatment it needed and deserved.”

Mr McCulloch was going to try to salvage some of the pieces of the tree to make something out of it, he said, but over the years too much metal had been put into the tree.

“If I brought it to a mill they’d holler at me because of all the nails in it,” he said with a laugh. “I don’t think that had anything to do with the tree falling, though,” he was quick to add. “It was just its time. It was time for it to go.

“Everybody had a lot of different opinions about that tree,” he continued. “Some wanted to see it come out, and others wanted to see it stay.”

Residents have been voicing their opinions about the tree and what should be done in the future in private coffee conversations all week. Some have even reached out to the two women who for nearly a quarter-century have coordinated the annual tree lighting at Ram Pasture.

What’s Next For The Holidays?

It is impossible to say right now what Newtown will do this year to celebrate the opening of the holiday season.

There seem to be a few viable options: stick with the Ram Pasture setting, using a smaller tree that was planted there a few years ago for just this; plant a new tree in a different location; or truck in a tall tree for this year’s celebration at Ram Pasture.

There is a Holiday Festival Tree Lighting Committee, and its members are the folks who take care of getting the tree professionals — including Newtown Tree Service; horticulturist Dan Dalton, who manages the annual display; and Steve Carmichael, from Connecticut Tree Doctor, Inc — as well as countless volunteers over the years to check the large bulbs, the wiring and even the stringing of the lights on the tree, and to coordinate the ceremony that leads to the throwing of the switch that lights up the tree. The committee has been led since its inception by Diana Johnson and Janet Woycik.

“I got a phone call Sunday morning about the tree from Dan Dalton, ‘the tree guy’ on the Christmas tree committee,” said Ms Woycik, who estimated the tree was about 75 years old. “It was a surprise to hear the news.

“It was Dan who suggested getting the new tree into the ground,” she said. The committee might keep the ceremony at Ram Pasture and begin using the younger tree sooner than anyone realized it would be needed.

“We’d been having the [older] tree treated for the last five years by Bartlett Tree, but thought we had more time,” Ms Woycik said.

“We’ve been offered trees from many people this week, people who have them in their yards, ready to dig up and replant,” she continued. “The best solution would be to get it from a nursery, according to Dan, because the roots are much stronger and will then last a lot longer. Of course it takes a lot of work to do that. We’re working on it.”

Lighting Committee co-chair Diana Johnson was equally as surprised to hear about the fall tree last weekend.

“Janet called me,” Ms Johnson said. “It was easiest to hear the sad news from her since she and I have been in this together through the whole thing.

“So many people in this town have worked on this project and have had such a hand in this tree project,” she added. “We have Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownies, Leos, not to mention the chorus and the dance people now [who participate in the tree lighting ceremony]. There are so many other volunteers who give things, and work on it.

“Over all these years, whenever Janet and I came up with a scheme we would ask, people would call, and we’d get it done. So many wonderful things have come out of this, it just lights your soul. There has always been a lot of support from people in town.”

Looking ahead, Ms Johnson said, “Some people have approached me and asked of the possibility of moving the ceremony to Fairfield Hills.” That would be a major change for the placement of the town’s holiday tree, and would open up another avenue of thinking. Would a permanent tree be planted at Fairfield Hills, or would a different tree be cut and moved to the area for each holiday, “like a New York celebration”?

“We have to figure out what to do,” she said. “It was so easy in the beginning because when we decided we wanted to do this project it was a no-brainer,” said Ms Johnson. “When you looked at Ram Pasture, it was a Currier & Ives setting with that tree, and the pond, and we were going through a cold era so kids and people of all ages used to be able to go ice skating a lot more, and we’d keep the tree on all year long.”

Ms Johnson has been hearing from people all week, and welcomes calls from residents who would like to offer their suggestions for the future of the town holiday tree lighting ceremony. She can be reached at 426-5418.

“It was a shock that it ended this way,” she said. “It’s just been such a wonderful project to work on all these years.”

And what of the strings of lights and the star that withstood winter’s harsh weather that had been on the tree when it died?

“The lights were not salvageable,” said Newtown Tree Service owner Rob McCulloch. “Most of them wound up breaking.”

The lights were scrapped when the tree was cleaned on Sunday, but the star has been put into storage.

“When I went over there on Sunday to see what happened,” said Mr McCulloch, “I made it a point of trying to save the star. Hopefully in the future when we find something else to use, we can use that star again.”

“It’s just very sad,” said Holiday Festival Tree Lighting Committee co-chair Janet Woycik. “It’s the end of a tradition, but we’re going to carry on and we’ll be fine.”