Ever since her sister, Carol Ann La Plante, perished in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, Jeanne Kavinski has dedicated much of her life to ensure that the world knows the woman who helped raise her – an author, poet and kind soul. On Oct. 16, Kavinski bowed her head to memorialize her sister in one of the most graceful forms she knows, in the branches of a red oak tree, planted as part of the Memorial Tree Planting and Beautification project at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Derwood, Maryland.
“When I heard about the project, I thought, ‘I can plant one of these for Carol,’” said Kavinski, a St. Francis of Assisi parishioner active in the Contemporary Ensemble and the rosary group. “That will be her legacy here to those who didn’t know her.”
The parish’s Memorial Tree Planting and Beautification project culminated on Oct. 16 on the suburban parish’s grounds, as Father John Dillon, the pastor there, blessed the 12 native hardwood plantings that replaced as many dead and diseased trees that dotted the campus. About 25 parishioners – many of them donors to the project – prayed alongside Kavinski, as Father Dillon led prayers, read aloud a passage from Scripture, and spoke about the trees as “living memorials” to the people gathered in their memories.
Tony Bosnick, the director of social concerns at St. Francis of Assisi Parish, said he is glad that the project launched during the parish’s 50th anniversary year had served both to help parishioners memorialize their loved ones who have passed on and to repopulate the parish grounds with native specimen trees that will have a lifespan of 100 or more years.
“I am so pleased so many people bought into it, and that we have this opportunity to watch [the trees] add beauty to the neighborhood,” Bosnick said. “I hope it helps us to embrace Pope Francis’ thoughts and approach to the environment, as well as the cardinal’s.”
“That would be very fitting for a parish named after St. Francis of Assisi to do that,” he added.
In August 2021, Cardinal Wilton Gregory launched an action plan in The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington inspired by Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical on caring for the environment, Laudato Si’.
More than 50 St. Francis of Assisi parishioners and their family members donated $200 each to establish a fund that prepared the ground and soil and purchased, installed, and maintained four maples, four American sycamores and four red oak trees. Rock Creek Landscaping planted the 12 trees on the parish grounds on Sept. 21. And, on Oct. 18, parish staff hung a memorial display bearing the names of donors or loved ones memorialized through the fund in the church’s gathering space.
Dan and Anne Cardile, ministry coordinators of the parish’s Haiti Ministry, memorialized their grandparents, a former colleague and archdiocesan priest, and a childhood friend through the project. Anne Cardile, a physician who works with Health Care for the Homeless, said she has always found deep comfort in being near trees, as they remind her that people are temporarily rooted to the Earth.
“The project was a beautiful intersection of honoring our Earth, honoring our loved ones, and honoring and supporting the St. Francis parish community, which gives us such life and sustenance,” she said. “We were immediately drawn to it and so happy to be a part of it.”
(Melissa Montealegre Egan is the communications coordinator at St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Derwood.)
