Arbor Day in Joliet brings out young people and young trees

Joliet on Friday returned to Thomas Jefferson Elementary School to celebrate Arbor Day, one of the first locations for the city’s school-oriented ceremonies.

Arbor Day celebrations at schools started about 20 years ago, and Thomas Jefferson school may have been the second one for the festivity, which includes the planting of a tree, said Tree Board Chairwoman Rita Renwick.

“Joe Shetina was at the planting of that one,” Renwick said, referring to Joliet’s longest serving councilman who passed away on April 18 as she pointed to a tree now more than a foot in diameter at the trunk.

Mayor Bob O’Dekirk joined kindergarteners, older students, and faculty to celebrate the planting of a young, thin Princeton Elm tree on Friday.

O’Dekirk read a proclamation extolling the contributions of trees to the city and joined the youngsters as they shoveled soil onto the newly planted tree.

City Arborist Jim Teiber handed out saplings of white pines and bald cypress trees.

White pines are sort of an Arbor Day tradition, said Teiber, who would get them when he was a schoolboy in Channahon.

“We’ve got three or four of them in the backyard at my mom’s house, and now they’re monsters,” he said.

Teiber told the kindergarteners that they could put the bald cypress saplings in a glass of water for the first several weeks and watch the roots grow out.

It was the 32nd official Arbor Day celebration in Joliet, which has been designated a Tree City USA by the National Arbor Day Foundation for 31 consecutive years.

Teiber told the students that the city will plant a thousand trees in Joliet parkways this year, which elicited a few wows.

Five hundred were planted in the last few weeks, and another 500 will be planted in the fall.

Residents interested in having a tree planted in the parkway in front of their homes can fill out a request form on the city website, joliet.gov, through a forms link found in the forestry section on the Public Works Department page.