Rain doesn't dampen youth tree planting event
John Huthmacher
johnh@hastingstribune.com
 John Huthmacher/Tribune
First Presbyterian Church member Will Locke and alums from the church's Go and Serve missionary program plant trees along the Heartwell Park median Saturday afternoon. |
A group of about 25 alums from the First Presbyterian Church Go and Serve youth missionary program and their families gathered on a rainy Saturday afternoon to plant trees to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the program.
The volunteers rolled up their sleeves on a damp Mother’s Day Weekend to plant a wide variety of trees along Forest Avenue on the South side of Heartwell Park. Combined with the 20-or-so trees planted two weeks ago along University and Forest Avenues, the 40 trees symbolize the program’s 40 years of service in communities across the United States and abroad.
Tree varieties represented were oak, flowering crabtree, prairiefire, crabapple, sergeant crabapple, tupip and maple.
“We’re gathered here today to carry out a Christian mission of stewardship, and what better way then to plant trees,” said Will Locke, professor emeritus in the teacher education department at Hastings College.
A First Presbyterian member since 1957, Locke and his wife, Ginny, participated in the church’s first-ever Go and Serve-type youth missionary trip to Chicago in 1966.
“We see this as an example of stewardship of the earth, but we’re also hoping that the young people here will get this tree planting tradition in their bones,” he said. “I think that will happen.”
To read more, see Monday's Hastings Tribune or the Tribune e-edition.
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