A Tree Grows in Tennessee

August 4, 2003
This year’s National RC Week is almost upon us—October 19–25—the RC Week catalog has already mailed, and RTs everywhere have marked their calendars and are getting ready for the big event. As you plan this year’s activities, we thought you’d enjoy this blast from the past—as you’ll see, sometimes what we do during our most special week of the year really does take root and grow!

The year was 1991, and the environment was a hot topic in the national news. What better way to celebrate National Respiratory Care Week, thought the AARC, than to sponsor a tree planting drive aimed at showing the RT's support for clean air?

So, the Association launched a campaign to mail tiny maple seedlings to members from coast to coast. The baby trees went out packed in soil, with high hopes they would survive to cleanse the atmosphere of harmful carbon dioxide, replenish our supplies of life-giving oxygen, and beautify neighborhoods in the bargain.

But imagine the surprise of Executive Office staff last week when they received this photo from AARC member Ron Hill, BA, RRT, vice president of hospital services at Jackson-Madison County General Hospital in Jackson, TN, along with a note describing the pictured tree as one of those tiny seedlings from so long ago!

“I was talking to my director of respiratory care, Joan Nowell, about a question that she wanted to submit to the AARC. I was relating my years of experience with the Association and told her about the tree,” says Hill, who notes he originally took part in the campaign because he “thought the tree was a great idea, something that the Association could do positively for the environment while promoting the profession.”

As the conversation progressed, somehow the idea of sending a photo to the AARC arose, and Hill snapped the picture and emailed it to the Association office in Dallas.

To what does he attribute the little seedling’s survival? Hill denies any special talent with cultivation—“I just put it in a pot and hoped for the best—my gardening skills consist of a good aim with a can of Roundup”—and says he doubted it would really make it, because it was so small. But after a couple of years inside his home, the tree outgrew the pot and he decided to move it outside. “I planted it where I thought it would give good shade to one of my cars in the future. It worked!”

And as it turns out, Hill’s AARC tree isn’t the only one that survived into the teenaged years either. Says he, “After talking with Joan, she related the story to one of her managers—Ray Davis—who also has a successful story about his AARC tree.”