Arbor Day came yesterday to the World Tree.
In a simple early morning ceremony on the lawn of Harkness Common, 400 entranced nature lovers paid homage to Richard Lippold's stainless steel monument. They sand and recited poetry and made speeches.
But the heart of the festivities lay in action. A world bird, made of wire, was released by two attendants and it made its home in the pronged structure. And when that was done a committee headed by Thomas A. Leherer 4G, a teaching fellow in Mathematics, transplanted six world trees in the shadow of the master construction.
The singing was inspired: "I reckon I shall never see, a poem as nice as this here tree. A tree that looks at God all day, because it cannot run away...."
They read telegrams from Luther Burbank, General Douglas MacArthur (U.S. Army ret.), ("World Trees never die...") Lippold ("... busy installing plumbing in lounge of Radio City Music Hall...") and Lassie ("Sorry I can't be there to see if stainless steel is really stainless.").
The hymns were sombre: "Hail World Tree, so beautiful. All hail, all hail, incomprehensible," or "Hail World Tree, we humbly kneel beneath thy boughs of stainless steel."
Read more in News
Varsity, '54 Tennis Teams Whip Engineers, 7-2, 9-0
