JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
There is an oak tree in Kansas City at least as old as the United States. Its name - and it does have a name - is Frank the Liberty Tree. It's been a focal point as a neighborhood and a city grew up around it. Well, Frank is coming down this week. And from member station KCUR, Frank Morris reports that neighbors cherish the tree as a deep link to the past.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Hi. How are you doing? Come on in.
FRANK MORRIS, BYLINE: In an old working-class part of Kansas City, people have been gathering recently to bid farewell to a tree so thick, it takes seven people standing fingertip to fingertip to span it.
SUSAN PALMER: My kids and I used to walk by this tree all the time on our way down to Apple Market, back and forth.
MORRIS: Susan Palmer (ph) lives just down the street.
PALMER: My kids were little and learning to read and learning history and whatnot. And so it just became sort of a touchstone for us to walk by the tree.
MORRIS: A weathered 50-year-old plaque from the bicentennial labels this burr oak an official Liberty Tree, one dating back to 1776.
BETTY ROZELL: Two-hundred fifty years old - same as this country.
MORRIS: Betty Rozell (ph), who lives just a few miles away, says this tree has seen a lot of history.
ROZELL: Just stories it could tell. I'm sure it was once a beautiful tree. Now it's kind of scary.
MORRIS: It kind of is. Huge branches twist crazily or end in stumps. Lightning blew the top out around the turn of this century, cutting a scar all the way down its gnarled trunk to the roots where rot and fungus have taken hold. It's listing ominously, threatening neighborhood houses and a high-voltage line. The property owners decided to take it down. Still, Crystal Beasley fell in love the moment she saw this tree.
CRYSTAL BEASLEY: I touched it, and I felt the energy of this tree, and it just spoke to me.
MORRIS: Beasley moved just three months ago from Atlanta into the old, brick candy store building right next to the tree, and immediately made a bunch of friends.
BEASLEY: I have so many people who just walk by, and they're like, I know that tree. I've seen that tree. I used to climb this tree. 'Cause now I have this network of people who are like, I love trees. And I'm like, me, too. Let's be friends. So it's very powerful.
MORRIS: So powerful that Beasley, who works in marketing, sent out a press release about the tree's impending demise, and she named it Frank.
BEASLEY: We had a hundred people show up at our first event to recognize Frank. And then, since then, we've had people emailing and calling and just reaching out to say, can I get a piece of the tree? Can I come and take a picture? Can I come and see him?
MORRIS: Beasley says people from as far away as Florida and Washington state, so literally from sea to shining sea, want a piece of Frank. A local woodworker will make commemorative coasters and cutting boards. But all this strikes Susan Palmer as a metaphor. The liberty tree, majestic as it once was, is now near collapse.
PALMER: It hit me as a symbol. Like, the tree is rotting and so, I feel, are we. Our society...
BEASLEY: This society...
PALMER: ...We have rot, you know? And it's - and I don't think we have much liberty left either, so it kind of hit me.
MORRIS: The tree is trying to make a comeback. With the unseasonably warm weather here this winter, new buds are already springing up on the tips of its upper branches. But Frank the Liberty Tree is going down. The job will take at least three days. Then the tree will probably reveal its exact age, and a bench will go up where it stood, made of wood dating back to the Revolutionary War. For NPR News, I'm Frank Morris in Kansas City.
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