NEWBERRY — The city held this year’s official Arbor Day ceremony at Boundary Street Elementary where a group of students, along with Mayor Foster Senn, planted a tree on the school’s playground.
“This is a great day which I think is very exciting each year called Arbor Day,” Senn said to the gathering of mostly Pre-K students. “Today the whole town is excited that we’re planting a tree right here on your playground.”
Senn told the children that his favorite trees in Newberry are located in Memorial Park beside the Opera House.
“A long time ago somebody planted those trees. They were small but they grew to be great big trees and that’s what is going to happen to this tree,” Senn said. “There are little children who will one day be able to play under this tree because of what y’all did today.”
Arbor Day was founded by Detroit native J. Sterling Morton who relocated to the Nebraska Territory in 1854 and, along with his wife Caroline, began planting trees around their home.
A journalist by trade, Morton soon became editor of the Nebraska News using his position as a platform to promote his enthusiasm for nature in a land largely devoid of trees.
A history of the holiday at www.arborday.org reads that Morton’s “fellow pioneers missed their trees. But more importantly trees were needed as windbreaks to keep soil in place, for fuel and building materials and for shade from the hot sun.”
Morton stressed the importance of these issues in newspaper editorials and encouraged individuals and civic organizations to plant trees.
It was in 1874 when Morton, then serving as Secretary of the Nebraska Territory, proposed a holiday to celebrate tree planting.
The following year the first Arbor Day was celebrated on April 10 and it is estimated that over one million trees were planted in Nebraska.
Today the specific date of Arbor Day varies by state and the time considered prime for tree planting based on a region’s particular climate.
Morton’s legacy is remembered in his statement, “Each generation takes the earth as trustees,” meaning we should all be good stewards of the planet we inherit.