On October 2, 1974, [the state Commissioner of Agriculture] convened the first of a series of meetings [about Dutch elm disease] of experts and private citizens. I attended and gave, I think, my first speech on trees, entitled, "A Private Citizen's View of the Urban Forest." I think I was one of the first people to use that phrase – urban forest --in this state. …

The key [to success in combating Dutch elm disease] is rapid removal of the diseased trees and then, of course, replanting of new trees so that, as the elms come down slowly, a new urban forest can be created. And that is exactly what we did here in Minnesota. But it’s about more than getting money. The first thing you've got to get is the interest of the people and the press. And that means getting the press to understand that this was an important topic and getting the people to understand that it was a topic that they could do something about with relatively little money. And one of the challenges, frankly, was learning to speak in sound bites. I went around telling people, "Look, if you don't take down the elms, more of them are going to die and then we'll have a spiral and then we'll have a naked city."

… Another thing that the Park Board did in Minneapolis was they began to put big red rings around trees with a T on them with red paint. And people would call up and say, "Does that mean treat or does that mean trim?" And they’d say, "No, it means terminate. And your tree's coming down.” "Oh, my God," people said. And that got them really excited. And when they begin to see these massive trees come down, they begin to worry about it.

[To gain support for a successful disease-control program] you have to have a broad approach. You have to first of all understand how government works. If you get up there and testify on something, say, in a budget hearing, it's almost too late. By the time you get to the hearing the budget is pretty well set in stone. You've got to start with the staff members of the city, state or county government. You've got to impress on them that this is a problem. Then you have to talk to the executives, the county commissioners, the mayors, the governor's staff that put together the various budgets. Then you have to talk to legislators and you have to get them to understand the issue, and then you have to have citizens talk to the legislators. So it's a complex process.

I was looking at some of my files from 30 years ago and I noted that I was writing about six or seven letters a day to public officials. I'd come home at night and sit there with my typewriter and type out letters or stay out at my law office late and use my secretary's typewriter and crank out more letters to legislators. Each of them, one page, because if it's a two-page letter it doesn't get read. If it's a one page letter it will get read, if it’s filled with some specific appeals and with some eye catching comments, so that attention gets paid to it. I've told people a million times, in lecturing around the country when I was chairman of the National Urban Forest Council, that a phone call to a legislative or governmental person goes away as soon as it's made. Now, these days, an email can disappear with the touch of the delete button. But a letter lays on the desk for quite some time. On a scale of one to ten a phone call is one, a personal visit is five or six but a letter is ten. An old fashioned, snail mail letter.

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