by David Falk
When we moved to Forest Hills in 1964, Linnean Avenue was shaded on both sides by stately elms, creating a beautiful and cool thoroughfare for spring, summer and fall. Then Dutch elm disease arrived, and one by one our street elms withered and died, exceeding the ability of the District to plant replacements.
A final indignity was visited on our street on June 14, 1989, by a huge and rare downdraft microburst that flattened trees from the corner of Linnean Avenue and Garrison Street northward for a few miles into Montgomery County, breaking roofs, smashing cars and blocking streets. Our shady Linnean Avenue was no more.
As I recall, it was the Annie E. Casey Foundation that came to the rescue of a still financially strapped District with an offer to all our DC communities seeking to restore the tree-lined streetscape: If a community could raise one half of the cost of replacement trees and agreed to provide the labor to plant them, the foundation would pick up the remaining half of the cost and would physically deliver to the planting sites healthy, six- to 10-foot Zelkova trees. They explained that the Zelkova tree is in the same family of trees as elms, but is not susceptible to infection by the Dutch Elm Disease.
I applied on behalf of our street in 1991. I rang doorbells to raise the necessary money. On the appointed day, Valerio Cermeno, our gardener from Peru (where we had lived for 2 1/2 years) and I, shovels in hand, planted eight Zelkovas. Seven trees ran along the east side of Linnean Avenue, beginning at the neck of Rock Creek Park. [Broad Branch Park – ed.] The eighth tree was planted at 4915 Linnean Avenue.
Seven of the Zelkovas have thrived in the intervening 30 years. An eighth tree snapped near its roots, presumably by wind, and was eventually replaced by the DDOT’s Urban Forestry Division.
David and Judith Falk have lived in in their home in Forest Hills continuously since 1964 except for two years in Lima, Peru (1967-1969). A 1961 graduate of the Harvard Law School, David has worked at two DC law firms, worked in the federal government on international and domestic issues, served as a policy adviser to Maryland’s Governor Schaefer for over five years, and this summer, ended 29 years as an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.