http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/09/06/2010-09-06_911_survivor_nursed_back_to_health_after_attacks_tree_of_life_for_wtc_site.html
Parks DepartmentScorched 'survivor tree' rescued from Ground Zero after attacks to get new home at 9/11 museum
One glance at a thriving 35-foot tree in a Bronx nursery and Richie Cabo chokes up with thoughts of the World Trade Center's twin towers.
Next year, visitors at the new 9/11 memorial will understand why.
The tree, its trunk scorched and branches stripped, was rescued from Ground Zero after the terrorist attacks, and Cabo has spent nine years tenderly nurturing it into a symbol of rebirth.
"I love this tree," said Cabo, 54, a Parks Department employee.
Originally planted in an outdoor concourse at the Trade Center, this remnant of 9/11 will be replanted next year at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
"For me, it's going to be emotional," Cabo said, anticipating the day when the "survivor tree" is removed from the Arthur Ross Nursery in Van Cortlandt Park.
"But I am going to be happy that she is going back to where she came from."
When the memorial opens on Sept. 11, 2011, the hardy callery pear tree will anchor a glade of trees near the memorial's heart - two 30-foot waterfalls covering the original footprints of the twin towers.
The burning debris from the falling skyscrapers reduced the then-8-foot-tall tree to a limbless, charred trunk, coated in ash.
Rebecca Clough, an assistant commissioner in the city Design and Construction Department, recalled the surreal moment when she spotted a speck of green amid the lifeless gray.
"It had one branch that had one tiny little shoot coming out of it, with a leaf on it," Clough said. "It was like the only glimmer of hope there was."
When the tree was first hauled to the Arthur Ross Nursery and planted on Veterans Day2001, Cabo thought the prognosis was grim.
But he and retired Parks Department worker Robert Zappala, 58, of Queens, went to work on their new patient. The tree was replanted in the park's rich soil, and its dead limbs and tissue were clipped to allow it to heal.
Fertilized regularly, it perked up almost immediately. It has been carefully trimmed over the years, to help its natural shape return. Scars are still visible where its limbs were blown off, but it has grown to about 35 feet - and become a source of wonder.
"Everybody that looks at the tree looks at it in awe," Cabo said.
The scars give it special resonance for the many first responders sickened during long hours amid Ground Zero's toxic dust, Zappala said.
"It represents a survivor, a seriously injured survivor of the World Trade Center," Zappala said. "It's something they can look at in the world of survivors."
The tree was uprooted in the vicious March nor'easter that downed hundreds of trees citywide.
Since replanted and restored, it's doing fine, said Cabo, who thinks the storm only added to the parallel between the tree and the post-9/11 city it represents.
"I think of the way the city bounced back and the way the tree keeps bouncing back," Cabo said. "It's a New Yorker."
My god- is that tree reproductive??? Every single seed from that tree should be planted. Its genetic line should never be allowed to die.
Posted by: Krista Levy | July 26, 2011 at 06:17 AM