Calling it the Survivor Tree couldn't be more appropriate

By Ken Raymond

Published: April 17, 2005

Workers lay the metal walkway on the piers surrounding the tree. The lonely American elm -- denuded, charred and peppered with debris from the Oklahoma City bombing -- has been reborn as a symbol of strength and hope.

Today, it is, at the very least, one of the most lovingly tended trees in the world. An elaborate underground aeration and watering system was custom-designed for it, and the promontory upon which it sits is a masterwork of engineering.

"As far as having all of these things applied to one tree," said Mark Bays, urban forestry coordinator for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, "I don't know of another tree like it."

But it wasn't always so pampered.

Buried in fill dirt, choked by asphalt, the tree was a survivor long before anyone knew it.

From humble roots
Bays doesn't know exactly how old the Survivor Tree is. His best guess puts it between 75 and 100 years old.

"As far as we can tell," Bays said, "it's a native, naturally growing tree in that part of Oklahoma City. We don't know if it was intentionally planted or not, but I've seen pictures of it from the 1920s, when it was in a fence row with a bunch of other trees in someone's back yard."

By 1952, the neighboring trees had vanished, said Kenneth Minick, whose family lived next to the tree for a couple of years. The community had sprouted with the development of the downtown area.

"We didn't really have any other residences in the area," he said, "or any other trees, for that matter."

One was enough.

"I was about 16 years old, if I remember correctly," said Minick, the founder of Minick Materials. "I had just gotten my license and bought my first car. I came in the alley from Robinson. I made too sharp a turn. It was a new Ford convertible, and I hit that tree. It smashed the fender in."

The tree suffered less harm than Minick's wallet -- but as Bays discovered after the bombing, the tree should not have survived later abuse.

Before building the protective promontory around the Survivor Tree, workers dug exploratory holes looking for the roots.

"Usually you find roots about two or three feet down," Bays said. "That's just how they spread out. But we didn't find any in the first couple of feet. We had to dig down about five feet before we started finding these major roots."

Bays realized that fill earth had been packed around the tree's trunk, probably to level off the ground prior to pouring asphalt for a parking lot.

"For it to have survived that much fill alone is amazing," he said.

The asphalt made it even worse.

"When you take a tree that grew up in a back yard and put asphalt all the way around it," Bays said, "99 percent of all trees -- I can't say 100 percent because it survived -- but most trees would have died."

From damage to splendor The explosion rocked the tree. Glass shrapnel buried itself in the tree, so deeply that Bays still finds more each year. A car's hood lodged in the branches. The leaves were stripped away, and the ravaged vehicles surrounding the tree burst into flame.

For the next year, no one paid much attention to the tree, which seemed little more than another bombed-out ruin -- there were far graver matters to consider.

"It wasn't until 1996, when they were coming up on the first anniversary and were planning out the memorial services, that somebody noticed it was coming out (in leaves) again," Bays said. "Someone -- the family, victims or survivors -- dubbed it the Survivor Tree.

"It became kind of a tree of hope then, and kind of a rally point for the families. They connected with it. It survived the full blast of the bomb."

Tended with loving care
Volunteers assisted Bays and the agriculture department in tending to the tree. The asphalt around it was pulled away in large chunks , but the earth beneath it was hard as stone. Workers used picks to break through the crust, then replaced the tough fill with organic mulch and inoculated the tree against Dutch elm disease.

"It'd be like lying with a cinder block on your chest for years and years," Bays said, "and then someone takes it off and gives you your first drink of water."

When construction began on the Oklahoma City National Memorial in 1998, the test holes were dug searching for the tree's roots. Diggers found the Survivor Tree had tapped into an old concrete cistern, extending the sort of fibrous roots usually found only near the surface. In essence, it had developed its own aeration system.

Engineers consulted with tree experts, among them Clinton nursery owner Steve Bieberich, before building the promontory around the tree.

"They were conscientious and didn't cut any major roots when they were doing it," said Bieberich, who grows seedlings from the Survivor Tree. "I think they did an excellent job of building that structure around it without actually hurting the tree."

The promontory conceals a host of innovations, including custom aeration, drainage and water drip systems and a hidden crawlspace. An artist shaped the grate surrounding the trunk to fit the tree's unique contours.

Now, the Survivor Tree is synonymous with the memorial. It's thriving -- a lush and loving monument to hope.

"A simple idea can grow," Bays said, "and that's really what happened here."