Joe Howard: The Big Tree Man

Joe and a Champion Tree

Photo by Donna Will

Joe Howard: The Big Tree Man

Interview by Ashley O’Connor Photos by Donna Will

Joe Howard began working for the Montgomery County Forestry Board in 1978; 40 years later, he’s as passionate as ever about preserving the beautiful trees in our area. I spoke with him to find out more about his extensive career as an educator and forestry board member.

Q: Tell us about your background.

A: I’m from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, a little town called Easton. That’s where a famous tree called the Wye Oak resided in Wye Mills, MD. It was a national champion white oak that is Maryland’s state tree, and it’s the biggest oak they’d ever found. It is a magnificent tree.

I went to college for my undergraduate degree at Salisbury, which is now Salisbury University, but back in the

’50s when I went there, it was called Salisbury State Teachers College. It just prepared teachers, so I got my degree from Salisbury and then I started teaching in Montgomery County, in elementary school and one year in junior high school. After three years, I got my master’s degree in educational administration at the University of Maryland, College Park. I went back to Talbot County and was teaching at a little school, and I was also the principal of the school. There were just five of us teachers, and I was also a part-time bus driver there.

The reason I bring that up is because the school bus I drove—on the Eastern Shore, the individual drivers own the school bus. Especially in the spring, I used to tell the kids, “Boys and girls, if we get all of our work done this morn-

ing, we can take a fieldtrip.” Basically, what I did when we took these little fieldtrips was I would take them to some of the famous estates down on the Eastern Shore.

Back in the ’50s, Talbot County had six national champion trees, including the Wye Oak, and every year, we’d go see the Wye Oak and some of these other magnificent trees. That’s how I kind of got into it. I was only down there for four years, but in that time, I became president of the teachers association, so I was very active in trying to improve the situation for teachers.

I came back to Montgomery County in 1960. While I was there, I got a program started called the outdoor education program, where we tried to identify things in the curriculum that we could teach better outdoors than indoors.

Other schools got very interested in participating in the outdoor education program; in just a couple years, we had nearly a dozen schools involved. I was spending as much time helping other schools get started in outdoor education as I was being principal.

The program was expanding very quickly and I said, ‘I feel like I’m doing two half-a** jobs and want to do one half-a** job.’ I actually took sabbatical leave that year and went to Michigan State University on a fellowship to get a doctorate, I got all the work done except the dissertation.

In the meantime, I was trying to get an outdoor education center built here in the county. I always thought that was kind of my dissertation and we actually succeeded in doing this in 1973, (opened in 1974): the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rock Creek Regional Park.

Q: What got you interested in working with trees?

A: When I was a kid growing up back in the ’30s, sometimes on a Sunday, Dad would pile all us kids into the car and he’d take us to see different local attractions. One place he always took us was to see the Wye Oak, so I’ve always felt that was what got me interested in the first place.

Q: What’s it like working for the Montgomery County Forestry Board?

A: For a while, I was president of the forestry board and I got a program started here in the county to make a contest out of finding big trees—that was in 1989. Originally we just put out a little sheet with our list of champion trees every two years, but in more recent years, we put out a very nice booklet every two years that we call “our register of champion trees.” This is mainly put together by one of our board members: Linda Pepe.

Originally, the board was much more involved with forestry. But in Montgomery County. We don’t do much of that anymore we’re involved in getting trees planted. Every spring and fall, we find a school that would like to have trees planted on the campus. We find the trees and we help the kids plant the trees. Usually it’s about 50 trees, about $1,000 worth of trees every year. We don’t have a budget from the county so we have to find someone who will underwrite it financially.

We also have a summer camp for students who may be interested in a career with natural resources and each county is allowed to send two kids. That camp takes place in Garrett County, way up in Western Maryland.

We did get a law passed: an ordinance that if you have a champion tree, you can’t just cut it down; you have to go through a process to get a permit. Right now, we have the national champion crabapple, and we’re in the process of trying to save it, so it doesn’t get cut down, because someone wants to put up a high-rise building at the property it’s on.

Q: What makes a tree a champion?

A: There’s a way of measuring the trees. The most important thing is measuring the size of the trunk. You measure the trunk at 4 and ½ feet, the circumference of it—and you record that in inches. Then you measure the height in feet. The third thing you measure is the spread: how wide the tree is. You add the three figures up and that’s the way they do it all over the country. It was a system that began in Maryland, a state forester worked out the system in 1925, but they only list native trees, unless an exotic tree has become naturalized in Maryland.

For a tree to be listed as a tree, it has to have is one permanent trunk at least 13 feet tall. Sometimes things that you don’t think of as trees are actually listed on the national list. For instance spice bush: the very name suggests it’s a bush, and it easily is. But it occasionally will grow with one trunk. Some national champions aren’t gigantic trees, but that just makes it more interesting if you’re looking for these things.

Magnolia and Joe

Photo by Donna Will

Q: Tell us more about champion trees and why they’re important.

A: The big deal about champion trees is that, you don’t associate big trees with Montgomery County, but over the years, we’ve had more state champion trees than any other county in Maryland. At the current time, we have five national champion trees in Montgomery County and 14 national champion trees in Maryland.

Q: What can our readers do to help?

A: The whole idea behind the registry, and identifying big trees, was to try to save them. Usually, you only heard about big trees when they were being cut down. We thought if we gave them some publicity beforehand, there would be a much better chance of saving these trees. We’ve succeeded in a few cases. We identify big trees but the only way you get big trees is by planting little trees, so my message, as my doormat in front of my house says, is ‘plant a tree’ and that’s a simple message I give to people. There are so many benefits in doing that, that’s the message I would want to get out.

Go to www.mcmdforestryboard.org to find out more about the Montgomery County Maryland Forestry Board. o

About the Author:

Ashley O’Connor is a senior multi-platform journalist at the University of Maryland. This autumn, she is an editorial intern at Washington Gardener.

Responses edited for length and clarity.