Rockefeller Center Tree was Alum’s Holiday Gift

12/13/2016 

Graig Eichler ’94 has a modern-day Cinderella story to tell.

In his tale, the role of Cinderella is played by the enormous, long-trunked Norway spruce that once loomed somewhat awkwardly over the family’s modest brown cape in Oneonta, N.Y., making the residents nervous during storms.

On Nov. 30, the 94-foot tall, 56-foot diameter, 14-ton behemoth was moved to an iconic spot in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Plaza and transformed into a glittering crown jewel that draws appreciative crowds from around the globe.

On that big day, the 84th Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony took place and Eichler and his wife, Angie, enjoyed their 15 minutes of fame explaining their unusual gift to New York — the second largest Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree ever — to news reporters from around the world.

	Above is an aerial view of the tree on Nov. 10, the day it was removed from Eichler's backyard. Above left, Eichler and his wife, Angie, admire the tree after the tree lighting ceremony.

“We never looked at it as a Christmas tree,” said Eichler of what they considered a somewhat gawky landscaping problem. “It was just a tree in our backyard that was kind of a nuisance. It dropped needles in our gutters. We couldn’t grow grass under it. The roots were coming up so you had to go around them if you went in the backyard. We weren’t attached to it at all.”

Eichler, a former secondary education: mathematics major and SUNY Cortland resident assistant who now works in the administration of SUNY Oneonta, and his family accompanied the tree on Nov. 12 as the spruce was brought into Manhattan by flatbed truck and erected in the famous plaza.

The family has offered pictures they took of the momentous occasion.

Since 2004, Eichler and his wife, son and daughter have lived in the home with its imposing backyard conifer, having resided for the prior five years in student housing on the SUNY Oneonta campus as part of the college’s residential life team. Eichler had grown up in nearby Milford, N.Y. so living in Oneonta was coming home for him.

But in all honesty, living within the spruce’s range worried Eichler as well as neighbors.

“When we first moved there, we didn’t have an opinion one way or another on the tree,” Eichler said. “We just realized how big it was. We were more concerned that if it were ever struck by lightening or snapped or blew over it would destroy our house.”

Sometimes the future Cinderella tree made itself useful.

“It was part of the stickball field we had in the backyard,” he said. “The tree itself was second base and the roots coming off it were the pitcher’s mound that we used. It was nice because the tree would block any deep flying balls coming into the house.”

The family, including Angie, Graig’s wife, and their son, Brock, now 19, and daughter, Ava, 14, used to play the game there with a tennis ball and broomstick handle.

“Until the day the guy from Rockefeller Center knocked on our door, we never looked at it as a tree that would go anywhere,” Eichler said. “Certainly not one that would adorn the Rockefeller Center.”

Cue this fairy tale’s handsome prince.

“It was one random Saturday morning in late April,” he said. “The head gardener from the Rockefeller Center was there.”

	Graig, Ava, Angie and Brock Eichler visit what's left after the tree was cut on Nov. 10.

Eichler, who now works as assistant director of business services at SUNY Oneonta, is modest about his role in Cinderella’s success story.

He said he initially ignored the knock.

“I looked out my window and I thought, ‘I don’t want to get the door on a Saturday morning’ and then I hid in my office. But he sat across the street for about 15 minutes until my wife came home and I heard her talking to him in the driveway.”

Eichler’s wife, Angie, whom he met at Eastern Illinois University and married in 1997, currently serves as an associate director of campus life at SUNY Oneonta.

“She came in and said, ‘You’ll never believe it. The head gardener from the Rockefeller Center wants to look at our tree to be the tree at Rockefeller Center.’”

The center’s grounds administrator had been trying on trees, not glass slippers, for size. Prospects included one that a family had offered to the center online that was located in Andes, N.Y., Otsego County, and likewise another in Morris, N.Y., in adjacent Delaware County.

“We didn’t submit anything to have ours looked at, but when he was driving from one tree to the other, he saw a bunch of evergreens over in our neighborhood,” Eichler said. “That’s how he stumbled across it. It’s almost like the tree found him.”

Eichler was surprised that his gawky tree, which had no lower branches, was such a beauty in disguise.

“One of the things the head gardener said is you need a tree that looks good on all four sides. That’s what he was really fond of when he found this one.”

It required about eight days and a crew of strapping arborists to primp Cinderella for her journey to the Big Apple. Most of their effort involved carefully tying her branches one at a time flat against the main trunk. For safety reasons, utility service to the Eichler home was temporarily rerouted during the actual tree removal. Then two cranes far taller than the tree were positioned on both sides before she was cut down and placed on the truck. An entourage of journalists captured each stage of the tree’s trip for posterity.

Rockefeller Center hosted the family for the two trips to New York, putting them up in a hotel and treating them to dinner at a nearby restaurant the evening of the ceremony.

The couple will pay their tree one more visit at Rockefeller Center just before it comes down on Jan. 8.

“The head gardener recommends we don’t be there when they take it down as it’s a sad day,” Eichler said. But the tree will undergo one final wonderful transformation: into boards that are used by Habitat for Humanity to build houses and mulch for a Boy Scout trail.

“It’s a story we can tell for years,” Eichler said. “It certainly means a lot more to us now that we’ve been through this. Next year when the tree comes to the Rockefeller Center, it will mean more to us.”

Rockefeller Center staff have removed the tree stump and will return next spring to restore the site and plant a new tree anywhere on the Eichler property.

“For anybody connected to Oneonta, it’s been kind of a magical feel for a lot of people through this whole process,” Eichler said. “It was very random, how this came out of nowhere.”