Seated in their third grade desk on Arbor day 25 years ago, an entire classroom of students each received a sprout of a Colorado Blue Spruce pine tree from a visiting State Forester and a city Parks and Recreation representative to take home and plant in celebration of the holiday.
One student, Linda, rushed home with her tree and requested to plant it right in front of her bedroom window. “You can put it anywhere you want it,” everyone, including her mother Cheryl Krutzfeldt, said. “It doesn’t matter, it’s not going to grow, anyways!”
Unperturbed by the naysayers, Linda planted her tree. Her grandfather would visit, looking to her tree: “Never gonna grow! You’re dad’s gonna mow it off someday!”
“That was just fuel to the fire,” Krutzfeldt remembered.
Determined not to have her father mow over her tree, Linda put chicken wire around it as a protective barrier.
“The tree sat there,” Krutzfeldt said. “And grew and grew and grew.”
Linda’s tree grew for 25 years until it was far from the sprout it once had been when one stubborn, determined third grader decided it would be planted in front of her window and that it would grow.
“It made believers out of the naysayers.”
However, from 1987 when it was planted to 2016, the tree had been growing in a less than optimal place.
“We were going to move, and then in the course of that, we decided that if we ever moved whoever came in there would probably have to cut that tree down,” Krutzfeldt said. “I was afraid it was just going to get cut down and fall to the landfill. That bothered me so much because it was my daughter’s special tree.”
So when Krutzfeldt heard about the annual call to donate pine trees for the South Dakota Capitol’s state tree, she saw a new purpose for Linda’s tree.
“My motive was to save the tree from the landfill,” she said. Though, she didn’t expect their tree to be picked out of the six candidates this year until her phone rang with Dawn Hill, co-coordinator of the Christmas extravaganza, with the news that their tree, Linda’s tree had been selected.
Once selected, the tree was inspected by a forester from the Department of Agriculture’s Forestry Division, the same division who sent foresters into classrooms to give out trees to third graders like Linda in the first place, to ensure the tree is healthy and fitting of the space.
Not only was Linda’s tree approved, by the forester took a cookie of the tree- a small one and a half inch slab of the trunk.
“This trunk showed the perfect growth for 29 years. Just beautiful,” said Krutzfeldt. “They are gonna take Linda’s tree cookie with them to show students how little trees can grow up to be big trees.”
From first planting, through years of nurturing and growth, that Colorado Blue Spruce will spend its final year as the pinnacle of the Capitol’s Christmas celebration and then continue on as the example of what one kid can do, planting a tree, on the next arbor day.
“Now we say that Linda’s tree goes out in a place of honor.”
Honor it will have being the South Dakota tree which is the tallest tree in the 100 tree display that lights up the hall’s of three floors of the Capitol building.
“It is the biggest honor to decorate,” Leah Svendsen, the other co-coordinator, said. This year, the tree will be decorated by the Mount Rushmore Society in celebration of their 75th anniversary and the 100 year anniversary of the National Park Service.
“It’s our way of recognizing these monumental anniversaries, which are happening this year on a state and national level,” Hill said.
Along with the anniversaries for the state, the Christmas at the Capitol event will hit 34 years with come December. Since those first years, when Governor William J. Jankow asked a friend, Dottie Howe, to bring in an “old-fashioned” Christmas tree to the halls of the building and she instead presented the idea of 12 trees up and down the hall, now nearly 100 trees ranged across three different floors.
Memorial tree in honor of Dottie Howe’s passing from 2015 (Photo courtesy of Christmas at the Capitol Committee).
“She and her family did most of the decorating…. Dottie always loved Christmas and decorating Christmas trees, so the idea to decorate the Capitol was just something she dreamed of.”
Alongside the place of honor of the grand South Dakota tree, the other trees are purchased from Wisconsin Tree Farms Inc. from Merrill, Wisconsin. 12 of those trees are decorated by the corporate sponsors who fund the entire event, but the rest- around 65 trees- are decorated by organizations and groups form around the community. Interested parties had to apply in August, then the Christmas at the Capitol committee had to weed through 200 applications.
Once those trees go up, an additional committee of 25 volunteers decorate the rest of the Capitol in preparation for over 20,000 visitors who will come peruse the many trees, wonder at the magic of the grand building covered in Christmas cheer, and, perhaps most inspiring, see Linda’s tree.
The Capitol Trees are up for viewing at the Grand Lighting Ceremony November 22 at 6:30 p.m and then daily until the day after Christmas (the 26th) from 8:00 a.m to 10:00 p.m.
