"From My Window"-By Mrs. Ina Champion 1938

On the west side of the school grounds, there were no trees so it was thought that a little grove would be delightful. Various ideas regarding this were presented but a council meeting Mrs. Euguene Staebler made the suggestion to plant trees, the more the better, in memory of the district’s pioneers. This met with favor and for months this afternoon was talked about and planned for. There was to be a Lincoln tree, also one for each of the thirteen districts, and by reading the announcement which was sent out regarding it, the immensity of the program still surprises me for in addition, there was to be a family memorial park as well as, the pioneer memorial section, a formal program, the children were to assist, giving them a half-holiday, also a perennial that could be spared from your garden and last but by no means least were the words- “we have a tag for your tree.”

Well, the afternoon arrived and with it, people and trees. Everywhere trees and more trees brought by truck, touring car, horse, and buggy and pulled by hand, and all busy with spade and shovel.

R.F.Walters who literally spent his days in a country and who seldom found time for anything else, in the forenoon went to the woods and brought a black walnut tree to plant in memory of his father.

Mrs. Mary Dickerson whose sister had taught a number of years in the little Island School 50 years before, brought a tree in memory of that loved sister who years before given much of her lovely self to the community. It was an ash maple and she was sorry it wasn’t a finer kind but someway if it had lived and we knew which one it was, there are some even yet who would stand by it and think kindly thoughts of our long-ago patient teacher, Clara Craft. The neighbor from across the way Elmer Sanderson said that as it was a family and pioneer commemoration he would plant five trees for five generations who had and still do live on the farm taken by them from the government, thus honoring grandfather, father, himself, children and grandchildren.

Trees have been set by various classes also remembrance trees for the ones who have passed on for we have been unfortunate enough to have at least seven of our boys, either graduates or high school students, meet accidental deaths. The grounds are quite familiar to me and yet with all the trees and shrubs, there are two that I know about, one a beautiful cut-leaf birch near the fountain donated by Leela Linder Laing and very near it some 25 feet or so of privet hedge given by my late husband, Henry Champion. Whatever may be said regarding tree planting would be incomplete without a few words about the beauty of the trees...

October 12, 1938, at 3 p.m.-

The autumn has been a particularly beautiful one, as summer weather. The thermometer registers 82 degrees and for three weeks the autumn foliage has been gloriously beautiful. I look across a narrow strip of alfalfa probably 1twelve inches high coming on for the fourth time this season; bordering this is evergreens, mostly pines set in the spring of 1933, the height varying from four to ten feet, and their dark shades of green are surely just right for one side of this picture frame. Then on the east are the sugar maples, with the gorgeous coloring of red, green, gold, and brown while on the south the soft maple syrup group gives us all the pastel shades imaginable. Then the eye falls to the picture itself and we see the grass still green and well kept as it has been all summer and the shrubs, not to be outdone by their friends, the trees, show a wonderful beauty, particularly one plot of dark red, and after much research, I find the common name is bush bittersweet.

1930 Scrapbook (1)