A treerific volunteer: the wife of Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter takes on the job of stumping the country to encourage tree planting - Jeanne Yeutter

American Forests, Jan-Feb, 1990 by Norah Deakin Davis

A TREERIFIC VOLUNTEER

The wife of Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter takes on the job of stumping the country to encourage tree planting.

Poised on a podium facing a crowd of photographers and officials from the forest industry and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Jeanne Yeutter donned the green cap of a Forest Service volunteer and saluted.

The gesture brought down the house.

The salute was her brainchild - not the creation of coaches from the USDA's public relations department. This genius for crowd pleasing augers well for the success of Jeanne Yeutter, wife of Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter, as honorary head of the Forest Service's new "TREEmendous America" campaign.

Last October 12, under the glass dome that covers the patio at the USDA's executive administration building, Jeanne Yeutter was inducted into the ranks of volunteers for the USDA's Forest Service. Her job: to serve as an official speaker at treeplanting ceremonies, encouraging reforestation efforts across the United States.

"Clayton and I both grew up in Nebraska," she confided during the induction ceremony," and in Nebraska planting trees is the logical thing to do." Over the years, the Yeutters have commemorated special family occasions such as anniversaries, birthdays, and weddings by planting trees in various places.

Presented with a cap sporting a Forest Service volunteer's patch, a windbreaker, name tag, and belt buckle, Yeutter signed up as the agency's 70,001st volunteer. "That's my official number," she noted with a laugh during a subsequent interview with AMERICAN FORESTS.

The interview took place after her return from her first public appearance - a speech at AFA's awards luncheon during the Fourth Urban Forestry Conference, making her debut a show of support for AFA's Global ReLeaf [R] initiative. "We have to start thinking about global warming now," she remarked upon her return from the St. Louis Conference. "We can't wait until it's a huge problem."

In addition to officiating at treeplanting ceremonies, she plans to attend selected forestry conferences and meetings around the country to increase her knowledge and effectiveness as a tree booster. She notes, "I met some really dedicated people in St. Louis, and they taught me a lot about trees."

Crowned by silvery gray hair, a youthful version of the natural look popularized by the First Lady, Jeanne Yeutter is heading up a campaign that Secretary Yeutter describes as the "beginning shot" in the Bush administration's reforestation campaign.

Actually, President Bush fired the first salvo a month before the inauguration of the Forest Service's TREEmendous America campaign. During a September trip to South Dakota, the President planted several trees and urged all citizens to help reforest America - starting in their own backyards.

Grassroots efforts are likewise the focus of the TREEmendous America campaign. Planting trees in urban America is the special target of the Forest Service's initiative, and Jeanne Yeutter considers schoolchildren her most important audience.

"We wanted a slogan that children can identify with," says this civic-minded mother of four. (Her resume contains a long list of charity and community activities.) But she hopes the TREEmendous America slogan will catch on with the general population as well with children. "And we wanted it to be patriotic and to express my interest in trees."

Jeanne Yeutter was born in Illinois and grew up in Nebraska. "When I was a child, we celebrated Arbor Day every year in school by planting seedlings," she says. A high school English and home economics teacher, Jeanne Vierk Yeutter remembers that after her marriage she frequently commented on the windbreak that her husband's father planted on the family farm to prevent snow from drifting as it swept across the wide open expanses of Nebraska.

"We would pass the windbreak," she recalls, "and say, 'Wasn't that good foresight on his part?'"

She adds, "They were large trees by the time I came into the family."

Although Secretary Yeutter notes that his staff cautioned him that he is to remain "second banana" to his wife in the TREEmendous America campaign, he is clearly as committed as she is to reforestation.

One of his earliest recollections is a memory of trying to save the trees around his family's homestead during the dry years of the '30s. "I can remember watering them by hand with buckets," he says. "At the time, we didn't have much in the way of water supplies, even for family consumption."

He recalls that sometime in the 1940s, "My dad planted the very large windbreak that extends for about a quarter of a mile from our house down to the drive."

A few years ago, the Yeutters added more windbreaks, and more recently they have lived in various homes that they have landscaped with trees. At one, they put in a dozen oaks along the street. "Clayton planted each one of those by hand," recalls Jeanne Yeutter.

"But the first tree that we planted as a commemoration was for one of our anniversaries," she says. "Then we planted a tree for the birth of each of our four children. And for the children's birthdays." At their present home in McLean, Virginia, they selected a Yoshino cherry tree, famed for its white (to pink) blossoms, to honor their daughter's wedding. Says Jeanne Yeutter, "Trees make a wonderful living legacy."