By Amy Batista, Special Writer
EAST WINDSOR – Mayor Janice Mironov spent the afternoon with local third graders discussing the importance of Arbor Day and delivered tree saplings for the students to take home Monday afternoon at the Perry L. Drew School.
“I’m here because I want to talk to you about a really important day and really important subject,” said the mayor. “Does anyone know what it is?”
One student answered, “Arbor Day.”
“What day of the month is Arbor Day?” she said. “Does anybody know?”
Another student raised a hand and answered, “April 29.”
“The last Friday in April,” she said, adding it’s always the last Friday.
The mayor then asked the students, “Why do we care about Arbor Day?”
A student answered that it’s about trees.
“Does anybody know where the first Arbor Day?” asked the mayor as she continued the back-and-forth with the children.
Students raised their hands and took guesses.
“The answer is Nebraska,” she said. “Who would’ve thought Nebraska right? In the middle of the country it had the first Arbor Day back in 1872.”
Students discussed why trees are important to the environment, and some of the responses included that trees give us oxygen; give homes to animals; give us wood to build projects and make furniture; give us shade; give us paper; food; decorations; and cutting boards.
“As you see there are a lot of things that we use trees for,” said Mayor Mironov. “Can you even imagine without having trees how can we build all these things? And aren’t trees beautiful? What would it look like if we didn’t have all these beautiful trees up around our homes, in our parks and along our roads?”
Each student received a tree, either a Hackberry or Eastern Red Bud, along with instructions on how to plant it.
The presentation concluded with Mayor Mironov presenting the school with a proclamation in honor of Arbor Day.
Arbor Day was first celebrate in Nebraska in 1872 with the planting of more than a million trees. J. Sterling Morton, editor of Nebraska’s first newspaper, encouraged the State Board of Agriculture to set aside a day for planting trees at a time when Nebraska was a treeless plain, according to the proclamation.
Arbor Day is celebrated throughout the nation to encourage the planting of shade and forest trees. Trees can reduce the erosion of topsoil by wind and water, cut heating and cooling costs, moderate temperature, clean the air, produce oxygen and provide habitat for wildlife, according to the proclamation.
