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Boardman students mark Arbor Day
BOARDMAN
Nearly 400 students in the township went home from school Friday with new additions for their yards and instructions on how to make them take root.
To mark Arbor Day, the Boardman Lions Club visited fourth-graders at Stadium Drive, Robinwood Lane, Market Street, West Boulevard and St. Charles elementary schools and sent them home with trees to plant as part of its participation in the “Fourth Grade Foresters” program.
“You’re now at the age where you can be responsible. ... You can take care of this Earth,” Dave Green of the Lions Club told students at Market Street. “It takes one tree at a time. We’re hoping you take them home, plant them and help make the world a better place.”
Along with saplings, students got a lesson on the history of Arbor Day, including the role of children in helping to plant millions of trees around the country.
Arbor Day traces its roots back to 1872 in Nebraska, where a Detroit native by the name of Julius Sterling Morton (a newspaper editor who was President Grover Cleveland’s secretary of agriculture) advocated for planting trees to spruce up the barren plains of the corn husker state.
Within a few years, Arbor Day branched out to states across the country and became an annual fixture in schools.
The Fourth Grade Foresters program started in 2006 with the hope of revitalizing that tradition.
“We need more trees and more forestation,” explained Nancy Golubic of the Lions Club, who helped present to Market Street Elementary students.
She showed students – who exclaimed in awe – a picture of a tree planted by her son when he was in elementary school. Twenty-seven years later, it stands at roughly 20 feet tall.
During the presentation, which also included a reading of “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss, many students eagerly answered questions and selected trees that they were instructed to first plant in pots, then in the ground.
“It’s just something fun to do, and it’s good for the community. We want to get more trees in the ground,” said Green.