‘It’s Like It’s a Member of the Family’: Tim Swiecki Planted a 3-Foot White Pine in His Stevens Point Front Yard 40 Years Ago, and Now It’s Downtown’s Christmas Tree
About 40 years ago, Tim Swiecki planted a white pine in the front yard of his Lindbergh Avenue home in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. It was 3 feet tall. This month a crane lifted it out of that yard, and the pine now stands in Mathias Mitchell Public Square as the city’s downtown Christmas tree.
“It’s like it’s a member of the family,” Tim Swiecki told Stevens Point Metro Wire. “And it’s going to end up being a Christmas tree.”
A Pine Too Pretty to Cut Down
Tim and Marilyn Swiecki had known for a while that the tree was outgrowing its spot. Marilyn told Metro Wire the couple understood it would have to come down because it was crowding everything around it, but they kept putting off the job because it was such a pretty tree.
They offered it to the city last year, Metro Wire reported, but another tree was chosen. Then Mayor Mike Wiza circled back and asked whether the offer still stood. With removal likely within five years anyway, the couple said yes, though Marilyn said they had to think about it for a minute because it is a beautiful tree.
White pine is a big tree to put in front of a house. The Morton Arboretum describes eastern white pine as fast-growing and long-lived, reaching 50 to 80 feet tall and 20 to 40 feet wide, and says it is best suited to large sites. In about 40 years, the Swieckis’ 3-foot sapling grew into a tree the city expected to stand about 45 feet tall.
Roughly 6,000 Pounds on a Crane
Moving the pine took city streets crews and help from Bushman Crane and Sign, owned by local philanthropist Wayne Bushman, according to Metro Wire. An estimate at the scene put the tree at about 6,000 pounds.
Marilyn Swiecki guessed the pine might reach 50 feet after trimming. WSAU reported that the 45-foot white pine was installed with help from city employees and Bushman Crane and Sign, and said Wiza called this one of his favorite times of the year.
White pines are easy to pick out: their soft, thin needles grow in clusters of five, the Morton Arboretum notes, and N.C. State Extension lists its cones at 4 to 8 inches long. The species is native across a wide sweep of the eastern and central U.S., including Wisconsin.
A Wisconsin Tradition With Deep Roots
Christmas trees have a long history in the state. In a 2016 look at that history, Wisconsin Public Radio described Wisconsin as one of the country’s top Christmas tree producers and noted that the Waukesha Freeman advertised a local Christmas tree sale as early as 1859. It listed white pine among the state’s leading varieties alongside balsam fir, Fraser fir, Canaan fir, Scotch pine and spruce.
Plenty of families have handed over beloved yard trees this season. In Michigan, Elaine Zinger’s front-yard spruce went to Detroit, and in Illinois, a spruce planted after a grandfather’s funeral became Chicago’s tree.
When the Stevens Point Tree Lights Up
The pine will be lit at 6 p.m. at the start of the downtown Hometown Holiday Parade, organized by the Downtown Business Improvement District around a theme of celebrating the city’s past while lighting up its future, according to WSAU and Metro Wire. Metro Wire lists the parade for Thursday, Nov. 19, while WSAU gave the date as Nov. 18, so anyone planning to go should check with the city first.
For the Swieckis, the front yard on Lindbergh Avenue will look very different this winter. The pine Tim planted when it stood just 3 feet tall, and that the couple could not bring themselves to cut down, will spend its last season in the middle of downtown, lit up for the whole city to see.
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Image: Roger Culos – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons
