The loveliness of trees celebrated at Arbor Day program in Charles Baber Cemetery

POTTSVILLE — In the shadow of towering tulip poplar trees, a young student’s recitation captured the essence of Arbor Day on Friday in Charles Baber Cemetery.

“I think that I shall never see, a poem as lovely as a tree,” Carleigh Palmieri said, reciting Joyce Kilmer’s poem “Trees.” “A tree that looks at God all day, and lifts her leafy arms to pray.”

Palmieri, a student at Nativity BVM Catholic High, recited the poem at an Arbor Day program that drew about 50 people to the Victorian garden cemetery.

Organized by the Charles Baber Preservation Trust, the program celebrated the planting of nine new trees this year in the cemetery’s expansive arboretum.

Carol Field, a trust board member, said the trees included ginkgo, Japanese ivory silk lilac and northern red oak.

The cemetery has 59 varieties of trees and holds the greatest concentration of red maples in Pennsylvania, according to Field. As part of a replacement program, the trust has planted 286 trees in the past 24 years.

The Rev. Dr. Kurt Kovalovich, priest-in-charge of Trinity Episcopal Church, Pottsville, opened the program with a brief history on Arbor Day.

J. Sterling Morton founded it in Nebraska in 1872, he said. On the first Arbor Day, 1 million trees were planted.

“What we’re doing here allows Charles Baber to remain a Victorian garden cemetery,” said Kovalovich, executive director of the trust.

Using a sprig of hyssop shrubbery, Kovalovich sprinkled holy water on the seedlings and invoked a blessing to ensure their growth.

Frank and Annie McGowan Murphy, who live across Market Street from the cemetery, dedicated a tree to the McGowan family.

“We walk in here all the time,” said Annie, the last of her immediate family. “We love it here.”

Her husband said they dedicated a tree last year to his mother, the late Marie Murphy, a former Pottsville city treasurer.

One of the other seedlings was dedicated to the late Judge Joseph E. McCloskey by Peter and Patti Armstrong.

State Sen. David G. Argall, R-29, Rush Twp., and State Rep. Ted Twardzik, R-123, Butler Twp., spoke briefly during the program.

Three Pottsville Area High School students recited poems dedicated to trees.

Jackie Robinson, a sophomore, read “Go Plant A Tree” by Ella W. Wheeler Wilcox; Rachel Thomas, a junior, read “The Loveliest of Trees” by A.E. Housman; Sunny Bell, a freshman, read “Leaves” by Lloyd Schwartz.

Mayor Dave Clews presented an Arbor Day proclamation to the cemetery trust.

Among the guests were retired state forester Frank Snyder and Joseph Orlosky, a former shade commission member.

Earlier in the day, Snyder had attended an Arbor Day program at the Penn State Schuylkill campus.

A tree planted there was dedicated to Larry Moyer, a nature photographer who shared his knowledge of plants on the Penn State Master Gardener hotline.

A newly planted tree was also dedicated to Helen Moyer, a horticulturist and former district director of the state Garden Club Federation of Pennsylvania. She was also a booster of the Frog Hollow Environmental Center.

At Charles Baber, as birds darted from tree to tree, Carleigh Palmieri finished the final stanzas of Joyce Kilmer’s poem:

“A tree that may in summer wear, a nest of robins in her hair. Upon whose bosom snow has lain, who intimately lives with rain, Poems are made like fools like me, but only God can make a tree.”