Guardian Angel to Gretna's Trees

by Judith Anthony

The maples, oaks, pines, and other trees in the parks and along the roadsides of Gretna, Neb., (pop. 3,142) are gracefully beautiful, healthy, and thriving thanks to the efforts of Ron Sawyer.

“Whenever they need help, I just do it,” says Sawyer, 69, the town’s volunteer arborist.

For the last five years, Sawyer has devoted at least 20 hours a week, spring, summer and fall, tending the trees in the eastern Nebraska community where he grew up—pruning, mulching, watering, or whatever is necessary.

Sawyer’s routine begins as soon as the weather warms and continues until cold prevents him from working outdoors. He applies fertilizer and keeps the trees well mulched. He rings young trees with stakes and wires for support and builds cages to protect them. Bark nicked by overzealous lawn mowers provides easy entry for hungry rabbits, rodents, or disease, and once they have nibbled their way around a young tree, it dies.

The bulk of Sawyer’s time is spent watering, something that surprised him when he first began tending the trees. “I thought that we would just put them in the ground, water them once, and then rainfall would take care of it,” he recalls.

It didn’t work that way. The newly planted trees soon began showing signs of stress, and even mature trees suffered from lack of moisture during hot summer weather. Sawyer responded by including regular watering as part of his weekly routine.

Over the last five years, Sawyer estimates he has planted more than 200 trees in Gretna, but he readily admits he was not always a tree expert. In fact, the survival of the first tree he ever planted 40 years ago was almost miraculous.

Sawyer had dug up a red oak from a friend’s farm south of town to plant in the corner of his yard but allowed the tree to stand for several days, roots bare of soil, in a big tub of water before he could plant it. That might have drowned the tree, but it survived.

“That tree really had the desire to live,” he says.

Sawyer began work as Gretna’s volunteer arborist when he retired from the U.S. Postal Service at age 65. After a long and active career that included serving as signalman aboard the USS Menard during the Korean conflict, selling and repairing television sets in his father’s hardware store, and delivering Gretna’s mail, he wanted to keep himself busy. When a neighbor suggested he join the Gretna Arbor Society in 1996, he not only attended meetings, but volunteered to help with the work.

Mary Gilligan, a longtime society member, was delighted. “He took over and did things nobody wanted to do,” she says. With Gilligan’s encouragement and assistance, Sawyer planted 132 trees during his first two years with the society. “I called him a guardian angel,” Gilligan says.

Working with the trees turned out to be a bigger project than Sawyer expected. “A few times I thought, ‘Hey! This is too much!’ But somebody’s got to do it,” he says. “I’ve got the time, so I do it.”

Gretna Mayor Jim Warren is grateful for Sawyer’s efforts. “We work with a very small budget, so we wouldn’t be able to do (what he does),” Warren says. In recognition of his contribution to the community, the Gretna Area Chamber of Commerce named Sawyer Citizen of the Year for 2000.

Judith Anthony is a freelance writer in Omaha, Neb.

first appeared: 7/15/2001