8th Grade Landscaping Crew

This is now a 50 year old event, so my memory is a bit fuzzy on some of the details. If you were there, feel free to comment or let us know you were there.

Probably in the fall of 1969 or spring of 1970, a group of boys from the 8th grade (class of 1974) in TC Armstrong Middle School, were asked to take part in a field trip. I can’t remember how many, 8-20 maybe? I can’t recall any classmate specifically who helped. We had to bring a lunch and we would miss classes, which sounded fine to most of us. I don’t remember if we rode in a bus or in cars, but the task they wanted us to do was dig up some pine trees and re-plant them behind the A-wing at the middle school. I guess it came under the category as “science”.

I don’t know how this started, probably as a conversation in the teachers lounge, but what I recall, we went to the home of Mr. MacDonald’s (a sixth grade teacher there) Mother, or Aunt in Wallington (Sodus) , where there were what seemed pretty large pine trees (taller than us) that we were to dig up, such that they could be transplanted. There were at least two, maybe four we dug up, which took quite some effort and time as I recall.

But when we finally finished, we had to re-plant them behind the school. The middle school was only a couple years old then, and had no trees or anything around it. So we dug some holes and re-planted them. It may have been a two day affair, not sure. We also didn’t obviously do all the work. Some number of teachers were helping, and maybe some other school staff.

Though my kids all went there, I don’t recall paying much attention at that time about those trees. So I checked Google Maps, and I can’t say for certain, but at least one of the trees looks like it could be a pine and about where I remember we put them.

Seemed appropriate that the class of 74 was involved, as we first occupied the school as sixth graders, before it was finished. No gym, no cafeteria, no other classes were there in the fall of 1967. If none of those trees survived, I’m sure we left a few other marks!