NEWS

The Treasure Tree capped with snow dominates the winter landscape (M Williams photo)

The historic tree participated in the "Blue Ribbon Campaign" designed to let healthcare and other frontline workers know that their neighbors care about them in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

My sister and her family came to visit us in the summer of 1977 when we moved to Davidson. It was a particularly hot summer, and our little rental house had no shade, so we were never able to cool it off.

During her visit, my sister persuaded me to look at a house on Concord Road that had been empty for over seven months. It had a sad look about it, and I didn’t really want to see it. But Bill and I and baby Ben were in the market for a home and this one was available. My sister can be very persuasive and there were few houses on the market.

We drove in between the brick posts at the end of the driveway, and a massive tree filled my windshield and my senses. Back at the University of Texas, I had fallen in love with trees and had protested mightily for their preservation. And here before me was a giant, right in the driveway, offering the kind of shade and coolness that I had not experienced since we had moved a few months earlier.

How had I failed to notice this grand tree? Well, it would not go unnoticed again!

I looked at the house, and it was lovely. But it was the tree that kept calling for me. When Bill finally came home that night, knee-walking tired after a day as an Internal Medicine resident in Charlotte, I pounced on him. I said, “Bill, I found our house. Or rather I found our tree. The house goes with it.”

He gave me that classic Bill look, a mixture of amusement and befuddlement, and said, “Well, can I, at least, see it before we put our money down?”

I told him, “Sure, you can see it, if you want to. But it’s a done deal.”

Sure enough, it was a done deal.

Jane Ellithorpe's watercolor of the tree from the mid-80's in its summer glory (M Williams photo)

Through the years, we have had talented, experienced people help us contribute to the tree’s health. Barry and then Terry both knew and understood what the tree means to me, the love I feel for it. One day, I called Barry from my porch steps because the tree had lost such a major limb that I feared for it. Between sobs, I explained it to Barry, and he dropped what he was doing in south Charlotte and must have set a land speed record in getting to us. He looked it up and down, pacing around it, his hands behind his back, then waved at me with a face full of sunshine. We could do some things for the tree, and it would be fine. Now, Brian has taken over the tree’s health, and he kindly understands about the tree and me.

The Treasure Tree is now official

The tree has sung to me everyday for 49 years, offering green and vibrant shade in the heat of day and the beauty of its bare limbs in the winter. It has withstood untold storms in its 100-plus years, including being twisted like a Twizzler during Hugo. I looked out the window during that terrible night and asked it to be strong, to stand up to the driving, swirling wind and rain. And it did. It sheltered our two boys and their friends when they played out front, as it drew me to the porch rocker each day.

It has offered thousands of birds and squirrels and creatures of every kind its welcoming branches and knotholes.

This marvel of nature has been a treasure to me for the entirety of my life in Davidson, pretty much all of my adult life. My sister is the reason that the tree and I found each other, and I thank her.

That it now has a pretty, green sign, naming it a “treasure tree,” by the Davidson Lands Conservancy, tells me what a wise and fine organization it is. Thank you, DLC, for recognizing what this tree gives to me, my family that grew up here, to all of us in Davidson.

Thank you, my wise and fine tree, for providing me with the treasure of your shade, freely and generously given. You are life to me.