47^th Annual Greentree Festival Committee Selects Theme And Will Debut New Festival Website

Kirkwood, Missouri -- Wednesday, January 31, 2007 – This year’s group of citizen volunteers that spend nine months planning Kirkwood’s annual Greentree Festival chose the theme of this year’s 47^th installment at their first committee meeting held earlier this month. “Kirkwood Greentree Festival: A Celebration Of Heroes” was unanimously chosen as the overall theme of the festival. The committee hopes that this theme will be easily conveyed through the various entries in the festival’s parade, which will take place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, September 15. The festival runs from the 14^th of September through the 16^th. Kirkwood resident Kirk Hutchison, chair of this year’s festival, promised the committee three days “in the mid 70s and sunny!” in response to last year’s festival, which was rained out on Sunday. The committee also elected to create a new website dedicated to the festival, which will be unveiled later this spring.

            The annual tradition known as Greentree was started in the early 1960s after a devastating tree disease known as Dutch Elm Disease swept through Kirkwood, damaging and killing many of the city’s canopy street trees. The first festival sold tree seedlings for $1 as a way to encourage the community to replenish those trees lost. Today, many of the trees in the public right-of-way were planted as a result of those early Greentree Festivals. Today, the festival still features the traditional parade and plenty of food, information, and crafts booths. Each year, the festival committee tries to bring something new and different to the festival. In recent years, the Folklife area of the festival has been expanded. Information on all the activities and events planned for this year’s festival will be announced shortly.

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