Sandy Hook Tree Is Traveling For The Holidays

By Shannon Hicks

The job to cut down, transport, and deliver a Christmas tree to the Stew Leonard’s store in Danbury usually takes about three hours. This year’s tree, which was selected from the backyard of a Sandy Hook home, took a little bit longer to get to the Federal Road dairy store this week, but it is going to make for a beautiful tree and tree lighting, promises tree wrangler Mike Reseska.

Mr Reseska is the seafood manager for Stew Leonard’s. He has also been serving as the store’s tree wrangler for 15 years. He was joined by Alex Vicens, head of the store’s security, when Mr Reseska went to the Doherty home in Sandy Hook to oversee the removal of a 45-foot Norway spruce on November 17. Dan Doherty had submitted a suggestion to have the large tree in his backyard considered for the holiday tree about a month ago, and Mr Reseska fell in love with the tree the moment he saw it on October 31.

“We were shopping [at Stew Leonard’s] a few weeks ago and Dan saw a sign that said Stew’s was looking for the perfect Christmas tree,” Sharon Doherty said this week. “He put his name and phone number in to a box, and the next thing we knew they called. We really didn’t expect them to call.”

While Sharon and Dan were both willing to give up the tree, they were not sure how their sons, Patrick, 11, and Joseph, 7, would take the news.

“Patrick got upset. He likes to climb in that tree, and he’s sensitive,” Mrs Doherty said on Tuesday, the day before the big move. “We talked to the boys about it a little bit and a few days later he came to us and said, ‘OK, give them the tree. This isn’t worth fighting over. We can always plant a new tree.’”

And that is exactly what will be done in the spring. To thank people for giving them a Christmas tree in November, Stew Leonard’s invites donors to visit their nursery the following spring to pick out a new tree to plant in the former tree’s place.

“Joe wanted to know how much money we could get for it,” she added with a laugh. “‘I think we can get 10 Gs.’ That’s what he kept saying all day long. The difference in the boys is so funny.”

The Dohertys will be the honored guests on December 2 when Stew Leonard’s hosts its annual tree lighting ceremony. They will be the ones to throw the switch at the conclusion of the hourlong ceremony scheduled to begin at 5 pm.

Sharon and Dan allowed their boys — with special permission from Mary Maloney, the principal at St Rose School, where the boys attend — to stay home on Wednesday to watch as their tree was trimmed and then bundled up for transportation. Dan spent the day at work, but will join his family for the tree lighting event. Sharon and the boys had planned to follow the tree as it was driven from Sandy Hook to Danbury, but a windy day and a snafu early Wednesday afternoon put a kink in those plans.

Sharon and her sons were ready when the two men from Stew Leonard’s arrived shortly after 10 Wednesday morning. The boys had taken one last climb in their tree, and had allowed their mother to take a number of photos of them in its branches as well as standing in front of the huge spruce.

While they were excited about the prospect of their tree being used for a public Christmas tree, the boys were still slightly hesitant that morning.

“We’re gonna miss it,” Joseph said, sitting on a branch for one of his mom’s photos.

Mr Reseska had already looked at more than a dozen trees, he said Wednesday morning, before he visited the Dohertys on October 31.

“You have, by far, the nicest tree we’ve seen,” he reiterated on Wednesday. The size and shape of the spruce were perfect. The tree is growing on its own on the side of the yard, which means it has received plenty of nourishing sun. Also, its branches were allowed to grow, unfettered, into the desired triangular shape of a Christmas tree, he said.

“Wait ‘til you guys see this thing at night, with all the lights on it. You’ll be amazed,” Mr Reseska told Joseph and Patrick.

At 46 feet tall, the Doherty tree is the largest one Mr Reseska has selected for the Danbury store, by at least ten feet, he said. In the past a crane and a flatbed have been used to move a tree. Due to its size, the Doherty tree wouldn’t work for that procedure. Mr Reseska decided to instead go with a private company to bundle the tree and move it to Danbury with a truck outfitted with a tree spade, a tool that usually digs a tree out of the ground.

“If you can imagine that tree,” Mr Reseska said, “lying on the back of a trailer bed … it’s a monster. It’s too big to just lay on the back of a truck. This guy, he’s going to trim up the trunk and bag it before we move it.”

Jeff Davenport, the owner of New England Tree Movers in Bethel, had been hired to cut and transport the tree, also arrived in Sandy Hook shortly after 10 am. Mr Davenport worked with Dan Dalton of Growing Solutions back in September 2008 when the new Christmas tree at Ram Pasture was put into place.

Joseph and Patrick Doherty watched on Wednesday as Mr Davenport began trimming the lowest branches of their tree. While the branches were pulled away and piled up, the boys helped family friend Mike Agius as he began picking up pinecones and then knubs — slabs of the trunk that were cut to create a smoother trunk for when the tree would be put into the six-foot-deep pipe that serves as a tree stand at the dairy store — and piling them up as well.

They stood with their mom, who was photographing the process, when Mr Davenport began using a Bobcat fitted with a tree baler to begin lifting the lowest remaining branches upward so that they could be roped into place for transport. After a few adjustments to make sure the branches were centered, he began wrapping rope about the branches while the baler held them in place. A 12-foot pole allowed him to get the rope up to the bundled branches.

Mr Davenport then backed the truck with the tree spade up to the tree and began securing the tree to the spade with rope and cable straps, using blocks of wood to create a cradle into which the trunk would lie once the arms of the spade closed around it. Unfortunately, a strong gust of wind that came through after Mr Davenport had finished using a chainsaw to cut the trunk but before he could close the arms of the spade blew the tree over, damaging his truck and putting an end to his day’s work around 1:30. Because of the damage to his truck, Mr Davenport was unable to bag or transport the tree.

The will be moved on Friday morning as driver and truck were unavailable Wednesday or Thursday, but the tree will still be in place in plenty of time for the December 2 tree lighting.

“We’re very excited about this,” Mrs Doherty said this week. “Especially for the kids. This really is a once in a lifetime chance to take part in this event.”

Mrs Doherty and some of her friends were looking at the spruce on the Doherty property just a few months ago, wondering if it would fit the bill for another tree lighting.

“We wondered if our tree would rate for Rockefeller Center,” she said. “We even went online, looking up the specs, but it wasn’t large enough.

“And now here we are, just a few months later, and our tree is perfect for someone else. This is our version of Rockefeller Center.”