Two Old Friends, A Man and a Tree

(CBS)  When you're 101 years old, losing friends happens more often than not, reports CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman.

"I've lost some good friends at my age and of course I feel bad," Frank Knight says. "I just thank the good Lord we had him so long."

Frank was devastated at the news that his good friend Herbie wouldn't make it. He's known him 50 years, and in that time, has grown closer to Herbie than most people ever get to even their closest trees.

The Herbie Project

That's right, Herbie is a tree. A 240-year-old elm tree in Yarmouth, Maine. Obviously, Herbie has seen better days. Yet Herbie is still, easily, the most beloved elm tree on the planet.

Hundreds came out to say goodbye.

What made Herbie sick, and famous - is that scourge of elm trees everywhere: Dutch Elm disease. The fungus swept across this country 70 years ago - eventually taking out just about every elm in its ravenous path.

The fact that Herbie survived all those years - all those seasons - isn't some fluke of nature - rather a direct result of five decades of tender loving care from a volunteer tree warden named Frank Knight.

"They all said you can't save it. But I'm so damned stubborn I said I'm going to try," Frank said.

So he sprayed and trimmed and coddled that tree so much his wife used to joke.

"She said, 'You know, if that tree's name was Susie I'd be pretty jealous - but she loved it as much as I did," Frank said.

Because of Frank, Herbie was able survive 14 bouts of deadly Dutch Elm. But by the time number 15 came along, Herbie had lost too many limbs - the disease had become too pervasive.

"I'm just grateful that one was allowed to grow so long and so big and so beautiful," Frank said as Herbie was cut down.

All that admiration - all that history - to let it just end with a thud seemed crazy to folks in Yarmouth.

Which is why, after Herbie fell last month, they cut up the pieces and distributed them to woodworkers across New England. Those people are now fashioning Herbie into everything from furniture to salad bowls.

The pieces will be sold at auction - the profits will go to plant thousands of new trees. Which should be tremendous consolation to Frank. You can only save a tree for so long - but a forest, you can save forever.

[tmittelstaed]

There's nothing quite like a street lined with a colonnade planting of American elm trees, and it's not something that most people have ever seen in their lives.

I live a few blocks from a school which has a colonnade planting of 100 year old elms along one side of the school yard. There is a group that raises money and pays for the inoculation of those trees every few years, and they are quite nice. But, I would never plant one on my property. If you really want to save a piece of American history, then go and get yourself an antique apple variety. The loss to the American landscape from the decline of the elm trees is nothing compared to the loss of so many heirloom apple cultivars.

[persdam]

When is the auction? Would someone be kind enough to let me know. You were 168 when I first saw you as an 8 tyear old in 1946. I would love to just have a wood-chip for a collectible. Bye Herbie Now we're both old and withered.

[newsterl]

DUtch elm disease is a nasty one, we could easily lose huge tracts of forests this way when we need them most

[barbaram99]

The tree is behind the gent..I am a Mainer..It is sad the tree was so sick that *** d to be cut down.. Yet it is start that things are being made from the tree. I now live in Seattle..Dear fellow Mainer I am sad. I rtully love Maine articles..Thanks..

[ibsteve2u]

The way this story touched me - the way it reminded me of how I hate to see things with so much history go - you'd think I'd be a "conservative".

But I couldn't, for I know that a modern "conservative" would have bulldozed the tree long ago long ago to replace it with a big box retail outlet or a burger franchise in order to make a few more lousy bucks from afar.

And to...that hot place with the locals who loved the tree.

[wtcmedicdidntforget]

Growing old is tough....