Thoughts About Trees and Family At Wright Park

Tree Name Card

My great-grandmother joined my great-grandfather when he had spent nine years in Tacoma, she traveled with their two daughters, Amanda and Marie, to arrive in August, 1896.  Probably Lowell School was the early outreach, but soon First Lutheran Church must have become a destination too.  Like my experience, they went to school, they came straight home.  I have rediscovered that there are more Lombardy Poplars at the park, planted in 1895. 

Four Poplar Trees

How tall would a Lombardy Poplar Tree at Wright Park have been if my grandmother and her sister wanted to walk from the church at 8^th and “I” through the park to take the streetcar the rest of the way downhill to Old Tacoma?  The Lombardy Poplars might have been 28 years old in 1923, if my mother or her brothers wanted to walk from the church, still at 8^th and “I”, through the park to take the streetcar the rest of the way downhill to Old Tacoma.  In 1924, when the Lombardy Poplars were 29 years old, my uncle Ray began Confirmation Class.  Confirmation Class was a one-year experience then, compared to the two-year experience of the 1960s, when I was confirmed at First Lutheran Church.  The very old flowering cherry tree near the bus stop may be the younger flowering cherry tree there when I waited for the bus to ride back to the Proctor Neighborhood.  We went to church, we came straight home.

Their grandfather often drove them to school, and probably to Sunday School in his Chrysler.  They also often walked to school, however, up the steep hill from Old Town.