Local Growers Donate to Trees for Troops Program

By Joel Frady

The order for Christmas trees was far larger than anticipated on Friday morning. For the fourth consecutive

year, Cline Church Nursery in Fleetwood acted as the local loading site for the Trees for Troops program, which will deliver approximately 16,000 Christmas trees to U.S. troops and their families this holiday season.

Pam Helmsing, executive director of the National Christmas Tree Association, said that they had requested for the donation of 650 trees at the Cline Church Nursery site - but due to the tree donations from almost three dozen local farms, they loaded 1,243 trees into three FedEx trucks.

James Cline Church, who co-owns Cline Church Nursery with his family, said that they "had everything from two trees donated from a smaller grower to one grower that brought us 400 trees."

He noted that he likes "to see the cheer on everyone's face" as they load the trees each year.

"I think everyone acknowledges what we're doing, that it is making a family happy of a deployed soldier," he said. "That's what it's all about. Everybody just wants to be a part of it."

Church, who also serves on the board for the National Christmas Tree Association, said the program was conceived around five years ago and got a boost when FedEx showed interest in delivering the trees.

"We've been fortunate enough to be one of the pick-up sites here in North Carolina," he noted, "and we've been happy to do it."

The trees were loaded onto the FedEx trucks with the help of local veterans and the Ashe County High School Junior ROTC squad. John Marsh, Senior Army instructor at Ashe County High School, said that the students get "personal satisfaction" from the event each year.

"Anytime you do something good for somebody else, I think there's some satisfaction there," he said. He said that they were called when the Trees for Troops program started, and he felt it was a natural fit for the ROTC.

"You've got an Army Junior ROTC program, and although it's a community service program - it's got nothing to do with going into the Army - the Army sponsors it to load the trees and help the soldiers and their families." He noted that it's just one of many community service projects the Junior ROTC program participates in; altogether, they supply 3,500 hours of community service a year, ranging from military funerals to Relay for Life to adopting a three-and-a-half mile stretch of Highway 221.

Once loaded, the trees joined thousands of others on their way across the nation and overseas.

"In this two-week period, we're going to deliver about 16,000 Christmas trees to U.S. troops and their families," Helmsing said. "Some of them have been delivered overseas already, and a lot of them go to the bases here around the country. Some of the families that are getting trees have someone deployed, and some have someone who's coming back at Christmas time or leaving soon. All of the families are away from home, so this helps to make Christmas a little more special for them."

Ashe County farms and farmers that donated trees were: Hudler's Tree Farm, Big Springs Nursery, Herman Tree Farms, Sammy Church, Sturgill Tree Farms, Grouse Ridge Christmas Trees, Barr Evergreens, Severt's Tree Farms, Shatley Farms, Richard Blackburn, David Powers, Lee Eldreth, Carolina Fraser Firs, Tucker Tree Farms, Jimmy Cox, Fred Cox, Tom Phillips and Wayland's Nursery.

To find out more about the Trees for Troops program, visit www.treesfortroops.org. To find out more about local Christmas tree farms, click to www.ashecountychristmastrees.com.