Page 25 - Pierce County Lawyer - May June 2024

A Tree Grows Grew
in Brooklyn Tacoma
By Richard DeJean
It was a hot July day last summer as I walked to the Bar office to see Kit, our hard-working and creative Executive
Director, about a forthcoming article
for our Pierce County Lawyer magazine. Just before taking the steps to the office I happened to glance to my right and lying on the concrete sidewalk was an acorn. Now, I thought, what the heck is an acorn doing in the middle of all this concrete sidewalk – concrete streets – concrete everywhere one looks?
The acorn was under a tree which certainly did not resemble the giant Southern Live Oaks with which I was familiar. I picked the acorn up and brought it to Kit’s attention when I entered the Bar office. Somewhat to
my surprise, Kit said she had a few of these acorns on her desk. And in that conversation I somewhat gathered
she had an affinity for this tree. The impression was that this tree was something like a pet (this was also Lynn Johnson’s office prior to the Bar taking it over and it was first Lynn’s pet). And, she offered, on those hot sultry days
of summer the tree provided some shade and, almost more importantly, the perspective of cooling shade as she looked from her desk outside to the concrete sidewalks and street.
I later learned that this slender (by live oak standards) oak was approximately 50 years old and was a Garry Oak. Lakewood has a tree preservation code where fines can be levied for removal of ‘significant’ trees. Generally, a ‘significant tree’ has a trunk diameter of nine inches or more; however the Garry Oak is given slightly more recognition, whereby it
becomes a ‘significant tree’ at six inches or more.
Betty Smith’s classic novel,
“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”
chronicles the lives of Irish immigrant families in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn, seen especially through the eyes of Francie Nolan in her formative years. One is struck by how hard and long one had to work in those times for such miserly wages, and how difficult it was for those early immigrants
to pursue and realize that vision we call the American Dream. The centerpiece of this novel, a tree,
finds it equally difficult to survive in its environment. The author describes it thusly:
“There is a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree which struggles to reach
the sky. It grows in boarded- up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps. It grows up
and out of cellar gratings. It
is the only tree that grows out of cement. It grows lushly... survives without sun, water, and seemingly without earth. It would be considered beautiful except that there are too many ofit.”
We might expect any tree,
the one in Brooklyn or the one on
11th Avenue in Tacoma, to be hardy
to have arisen from such formidable circumstances, to have been given life
in such a difficult landscape (concrete) and to have grown and flourished. The tree on 11th Avenue, Kit’s pet, overlooked the trials, tribulations and achievements of the Pierce County Bar in its efforts to bring justice to all of the citizens of Pierce County, including so many divergent groups. And to have seen the success, with so few failings, it would have witnessed some great achievements.
But sometimes things that have meaning in our lives, if only fleetingly, elude
our attempts to render them more permanent. And such was the fate of Kit’s tree on 11th Avenue. Shortly after
learning of it I was told the city had plans to remove this tree. I offered to see if I might dissuade them, and was informed the city was not expected to undertake this removal until later in May. As I
was in the middle of quite a few time- sensitive matters at the time (motions, etc.) I thought I could delay my efforts. And then, in mid-March, I heard the city had already removed that tree! On learning this I called Kit and was told the city had replaced this special tree with ‘a bush’. Could it be that this ‘bush’ will transform 11th Avenue into as great a thoroughfare as the trees in Brooklyn which created “Flatbush Avenue”? Flatbush Avenue, built over a Native American footpath and connecting old Dutch villages became one of the major roadways in Brooklyn, even running past Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers! (and a huge array of baseball greats; the Brooklyn Dodgers were at the center of many momentous events in American history)!
Could Kit’s pet Garry Oak, having
its birth and living its life in concrete (until it was sent to the guillotine and replaced by a ‘bush’) have bequeathed to 11th Avenue those qualities that Francie Nolan’s ubiquitous tree bequeathed
to Flatbush Avenue (it having also emerged into the world in a concrete environment)? Those great events which took place at and near Ebbets Field might, in different ways, have been in store for our resourceful and gifted Bar Association! We’ll see.
Richard DeJean is a Cajun from Southwest Louisiana. He is a long-time volunteer with Send-A-Vet, a non profit that takes and sends combat injured veterans on outdoor experi- ences throughout the US. His practice is in Sumner, Wa
May/Junel 2024 | PIERCE COUNTY LAWYER 25