Rather than working with botanical trees
as San José City Arborist, since retiring
I have been working on my family tree.
My mother's side of the family has been
in America since the 1850s, but all of
her ancestors have German roots. I
have been able to track down where in
Germany her ancestors originated from
and even better, for the most part the
church records for those villages are now
online, free of charge, going back to the
1600s. This has allowed me to track down
who many of my 7th or 8th great-grand-
parents and their descendants were.
My wife and I flew to Germany to visit
these villages and try to imagine what
they must have looked like hundreds of
years ago. Thanks to connections with
other researchers, we have met some of
my distant German cousins, who have
been genuinely interested in meeting
their American cousin. All of my mother's
family eventually settled in Richmond,
Indiana and it has been interesting to
see that the countryside of northwestern
Germany where they came from sure
looks similar to Indiana. I guess we tend
to seek out places that feel like home
even though separated by thousands
of miles with an ocean in between.
Here's a story I think you will find relatable.
For the occasion of my 50th high school
reunion, I'd gotten permission from the
principal and went out and purchased a
small valley oak (Quercus lobata), which
is one of the native trees to Concord,
California where I grew up. However, in
echoes of the municipal bureaucracy I
waded through in my career, it turned out
that the school principal does not have the
final word on the campus landscape, so
we had to get permission from the school
district office instead. The district was
worried about the care and feeding, and
eventual liability, of a potentially massive
oak tree, so they nixed the idea. They
said that perhaps a smaller tree would be
okay, but they still have not given permis-
sion to proceed with a planting. So, one
of my classmates who wanted to screen
an unattractive view from his backyard
was the recipient of the oak instead.
—Ralph Mize
"My wife and I flew to Germany
to visit these villages and try to
imagine what they must have
looked like hundreds of years ago."
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