Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 24, 1994 TAG: 9411260020
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: KIMBERLY N. MARTIN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
When Helen Cales heard about Roanoke's annual hunt for the perfect Christmas tree, she thought she had one that fit the bill.
And she did.
The height and grace of Cales' blue spruce instantly impressed the city's horticulturalist, forester and special-events coordinator.
But that spruce, which now stands in Lee Plaza, draped with multicolored bulbs and topped with a replica of the Mill Mountain Star, wasn't the tree Cales had in mind to give.
"I wanted them to take the one in the backyard," Cales said with a laugh. "We've had some rough winters the last two years and I was scared it would fall over onto Plantation Road."
But the 20-year-old tree in her back yard, with gaps in its foliage, wouldn't do.
The tree for the occasion had to be tall, full and accessible, said Laban Johnson, special-events coordinator.
And of the 12 sites the team of judges spent Nov. 11 surveying, the 30-some-foot blue spruce that dominated Cales' front yard best fit the bill.
"We saw some trees that were just terrible, with drooping lower limbs. And some other trees just weren't big enough," Johnson said. "It was an easy choice."
But Cales knew giving up the tree the city wanted, which over the years had become like "part of the family," wouldn't be easy.
That tree had a 40-year history with her family.
In the 1950s, Cales' sister bought the tree and four others for a dollar from a mail-order catalog. When the seedlings arrived weeks later in an envelope, Helen was promised that when she got a house of her own she could have one.
That happened a few years later, when she moved into her home on Fieldale Road Northeast. And the spruce, which was then "as tall as my 3-year-old grandson," was hers.
"We put it in the trunk of the car, and drove it down [from West Virginia]," Cales said. "Of all of them, that was the prettiest one."
While she and her daughter looked on, her husband planted the baby tree in the yard.
Over the years it grew and grew, until it covered all but a narrow strip of grass on one side of her yard.
The tree's size - and the city's agreement to remove the one in the backyard, too - persuaded Cales to let the city have her family heirloom.
"I was scared it would fall over on the house during a storm. ... But it was sad to see it go," Cales said.
As for plot of barren ground the tree left, Cales plans to put in a flower bed in the spring, and maybe another tree.
"I can't live without my trees, but next time it has to be one that doesn't grow so tall," she said.
The community tree will be lit by Cales' grandson Stephen, the 3-year-old, at tonight's 7 p.m. ceremony.
by CNB