The Tree with No Name - an American elm becomes a monument to the Oklahoma City bombing

Mark Bays says he's just doing his job. But saving Oklahoma City's Survivor Tree is no everyday matter.

We've all seen them: the nameless trees that populate parking lots and strip medians. But sometimes circumstances transform anonymous trees into extraordinary ones. That's what happened April 19, 1995, to an American elm in the parking lot behind the Journal Record Building in Oklahoma City. When a truck bomb exploded only 75 or 80 yards away at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the fates of the people inside and the tree became intertwined.

The bomb killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. At least half the tree's limbs were scorched from car fires beneath its branches, and investigators removed glass, concrete, and metal from its limbs. But somehow the sturdy elm survived.

Mark Bays is part of the reason. An urban forestry coordinator for the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Bays saw the tree for the first time several months after the bombing.

"It was really kind of a coin toss whether the tree was going to recover, Bays says. "It was totally defoliated. Plus, there was asphalt all the way up to the trunk of the tree. It was really, truly a survivor tree, even before the bomb went off."

By early 1996 victims' families and survivors had dubbed it the "Survivor Tree." It was then that Bays and supporters across the state and around the country set to preserving the tree, which Bays believes to be between 80 and 100 years old. With the Oklahoma City street crew, Bays chipped by hand 10 to 15 feet of concrete around the tree's base. Local business McCoy Tree Surgery collected seeds, pruned, and treated the soil, tasks that have become yearly traditions for the company. And Bays handed out seedlings from the tree at the second annual memorial service for victims' families.

"The significance of those first seedlings, collected the first spring following the tragedy, was huge," Bays says. "[They help with] the healing process because [the families] can...plant the tree and memorialize their loved one wherever and whatever way they want."

The local Sunshine Nursery took cuttings from the Survivor Tree. That's because even with the best care, trees in urban areas eventually decline from the stresses of city life. The cuttings will ensure the tree's legacy, Bays says.

Recent efforts will ensure the elm's survival for "a good number of years," Bays says. In 1997 he and the street crew shoveled and chipped asphalt in a 60-foot circle around the tree, dramatically improving the tree's setting. Studies of recent growth rings show the elm is responding well to treatment. The rich tone of its leaves offers more hope.

Those leaves should look lustrous for the April 19 dedication of the Symbolic Memorial, a new unit of the National Park System that features the Survivor Tree, a reflecting pool, and 168 empty chairs, one for each life lost during the bombing. During the memorial's construction, Bays and construction crews built a 6-to-8 foot fence to shelter the tree from heavy equipment. They also hand-dug 100 holes to support concrete piers for an elevated walkway around the tree. But perhaps most important, Bays helped a grieving community save a tree that once had no name.

"If my helping to preserve the Legacy of the Survivor Tree is helpful to them, then I feel honored that I'm able to be involved and bring my expertise," Bays says. "The healing will continue and the legacy of the Survivor Tree will live on."

Janine Guglielmino is associate editor of American Forests.

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