Daughter donates mom s tree to Macy’s

RANGER — Judy Coggins remembers the day 38 years ago when her mother planted four white pine seedlings around her home off U.S. 411.

On Nov. 13, Coggins watched as one of the three remaining trees was cut and hauled to Atlanta to become this year’s Macy’s Great Tree.

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JOHN WILLIS/Associated Press

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JOHN WILLIS/Associated Press

The the tree is lifted to a flatbed trailer after it was cut on Thursday in Ranger, Ga.

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“It’s a big tree,” Coggins said of the white pine. Her husband Morgan estimated that the tree is about 60 feet tall.

Coggins said her parents, Rachel and Spurgeon Putnam, were both gardeners.

“My mother had two green thumbs,” she said. “I inherited about half of one.”

The Putnams lived on the Gordon County property for many years, Coggins said. “That’s where we all were raised. When Mother and Daddy got older, Daddy sold all but four acres. They moved to Florida but moved back not too long after that.”

When the Putnams came back to Ranger in 1970, they put a trailer on the remaining four acres, and Coggins’ mother planted the four seedlings — two in front and two in back.

“Mother went up into the mountains somewhere in Gilmer County and dug them up, brought them back and planted them,” Coggins said. “She babied those seedlings, and they grew into beautiful trees. Mother loved those trees — so did Daddy.”

Her father died in 1995, and her mother died in 2005. “Now that they are gone, there’s not much left out here but the trailer and the trees,” Coggins said.

Coggins said a forester who looks for trees for Macy’s noticed Rachel Putnam’s white pines several years ago, when all four were still standing.

“He first called me about four or five years ago to see if I’d be interested in letting them have one for Macy’s Great Tree,” she said. “I told him at first that I wasn’t sure but then called back and said yes. One of the reasons I changed my mind is because I know how happy Mother would have been.”

Gene Weeks, vice president of Entertainment Design Group, said Macy’s has been watching Rachel Putnam’s trees for a number of years.

“It’s always a chore to find a nice symmetrical tree,” Weeks said. “When a tree grows in the wild, it’s often clustered with other trees, and there is usually a bad side. When it grows out in the open like this one, you get a nice symmetrical tree.”

In the interim, one of the two trees in front of the trailer died (the life span of a white pine is 35-40 years), leaving the one Macy’s will use and the two in back of the trailer.

“The two in the back are pretty trees, but not as pretty as the one in the front,” Coggins said.

A tree crew was at the property Wednesday tying the tree so it could be put on a truck. When the tree’s limbs are completely tied up, its diameter will be reduced to 14 to 15 feet, said Andy Rodgers with Superior Rigging of Atlanta.

“We start at the top and pull the limbs in, working our way to the ground,” said Rodgers, who has been cutting trees for Macy’s since 1963.

On Thursday, the tree was cut down, loaded onto a flatbed truck and hauled to Atlanta.

“This is pretty exciting,” said Cindy Brown, Ranger city clerk, who was watching the activity along with a contingent of Ranger residents.

For the next two weeks, a team of eight workers will decorate the tree, which will be officially lighted for the Christmas season on Thanksgiving night at the Macy’s at Lenox Square, said Weeks, whose company has produced the annual tree-lighting show for the past 16 years. This year’s ceremony will be dedicated to Rachel Putnam, he said.

A Macy’s spokesman said more than 2.2 million people will see the Great Tree during the Christmas season.

“I’m glad Macy’s is going to get it, but I’m still a little sad,” said Coggins, who plans to go to Lenox Square on Thanksgiving night to watch the lighting of the tree. “This would have thrilled Mother and Daddy — certainly her. If she was here, she’d want to follow it down to Atlanta.”

THE GREAT TREE

The 38-year-old white pine is 60 feet tall and weighs about 14,000 pounds. It was cut from the old Putnam place off U.S. 411 in Ranger and hauled to the Lenox Square Macy’s.

A crew of eight people will work two weeks to decorate the tree with 125 red Macy’s stars, 125 white snowflakes, 1,200 multi-color metallic basketball-sized ornaments; 50 strobe lights, 400 internally lit ornaments, 4,000 11-watt bulbs. The tree will be topped with a color-changing Macy’s star.

The tree drinks a mixture of 200 aspirins dissolved in 300 gallons of water to maintain its freshness.

The tree’s stand and supports are designed to weather hurricane force storms.

This year’s Great Tree will be lighted on Thanksgiving night and will be viewed by more than 2.2 million people.