Reprinted from Susan’s Blogue

A fly faces a perilous future after landing on the jaw-like business end of a Venus flytrap.

WILMINGTON — Growing up in the Land of the Lower Cape Fear has many advantages. For me, one of those is lifelong familiarity with a gloriously peculiar plant known as the Venus flytrap. There seems to have always been a relative or a teacher who had one and was eager to help demonstrate its famous move, and we would watch the clamps snap together. My grandmother told me proudly that they only grew in our little corner of the world.

One summer, my parents gave me two robust flytraps of my own. I loved feeding them small newly dead insects I killed with an old-fashioned metal flyswatter. I watered and looked after my strange charges for a season, but life on a screen porch – and with a child as caregiver – proved to be too much for them.

The wonder of the species has stayed with me over the years. That a plant would come into being equipped with the means to attract, nab, and digest its own food is amazing. Flytraps are botanical inversions – upending the usual underground conduits of nutrition grounded in dirt, to draw from the air instead. And their quirky design makes human art and engineering pale.

Then, there’s a horrible nature of it all – the sort of scene that makes you want to cover your eyes, but peek through your fingers. What had seemed appealing turns into terror. It would be like sitting down as a guest at a bountiful table, then being snapped into inescapable darkness – and digested by the host.

The first person known to become enamored with the unique plant was Gov. Arthur Dobbs, an amateur botanist who chose Brunswick County as his home. On his 70th birthday, April 2, 1759, he wrote from Castle Dobbs in Brunswick Town, to naturalist Peter Collinson in England: “I have taken a little Plantation at the sound on the sea coast. We have a kind of Catch Fly Sensitive which closes upon anything that touches it. It grows in Latitude 34 but not in 35. I will try to save the seed here. Your most humble servant, Arthur Dobbs.”

Gov. Arthur Dobbs. Portrait by William Hoare. Dobbs Collection. Photo by author.

The governor’s son, Edward, hand-delivered his father’s letter to Collinson during the summer of 1759 thus informing the European world for the first time of the Venus flytrap. Soon, Peter Collinson wrote to the famous Philadelphia naturalist John Bartram of the plant with the “iron spring fox trap,” as Dobbs had termed it. Bartram’s son, William, came to Wilmington to live for a while and when he returned, he took a flytrap to his father who made sketches of it. Collinson wrote many letters to Wilmington requesting a live plant but it was nine years before a live Brunswick County flytrap arrived in London.

John Ellis, an eminent London naturalist and another friend of Dobbs’, had drawings made of the plant for The St. James’s Chronicle. It was also Ellis who came up with the scientific name for what had quickly become known in London as the Tippitywichit: Dionaea muscipula. Ellis wrote that the name “may be construed into English, with humble submission both to critics and foreign commentators, either Venus’s Flytrap or Venus’s Mousetrap.”

Another of the plant’s devotees was Moses Ashley Curtis, an Episcopal priest and botanist. After graduating from Williams College in 1827, Curtis moved to Wilmington where he worked as tutor for Gov. Edward B. Dudley’s children. During that time, he discovered the many unique plants of the area, but was most fascinated with Dionaea muscipula.

Later, Moses Curtis became an Episcopal priest and a botanist of distinction. One of his many publishing accomplishments was a paper entitled “Enumeration of Plants Growing Spontaneously Around Wilmington, North Carolina.” In 1834, he married Mary Jane deRosset, the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Armand John deRosset of Wilmington.

For most of his career, Rev. Curtis was rector at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Hillsborough. He also served as headmaster of the Episcopal Diosecan Boys’ School for two years, where he taught botany with a passion. His students went away with a working knowledge of the Venus flytrap. One of those boys was named William Augustus Wright, Jr.

Just as Rev. Curtis caught the botany bug from his Williams College professors, Chester Dewey and Amos Eaton, he had spread the good bug to Willie Gus Wright . Wright gained respect in Wilmington as an authority of botany. Later in life, Willie Gus and wife, Louisa Gabriella Holmes, were in London where they visited Kew Gardens. As they wandered through the grounds, he grabbed his wife’s arm and said, “Why look there at our Dionoea muscipula!” A garden employee vanished suddenly and returned quickly with his supervisor.

“Are you from Wilmington, North Carolina?” the supervisor asked the Wrights, knowing the native location of the flytrap. They soon found that the men were all former students of Rev. Curtis.

Stanley Rehder talks with Barbara Walters to promote the Venus flytrap on the “Today Show” in 1976. Photo: Courtesy of Cape Fear Museum.

Through time, many folks have spoken the virtues of the Venus flytrap. Longtime Director of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce, Louis T. Moore, used the plant as one of many unusual features to entice folks to visit Wilmington. From time to time, his descriptions were included in newspapers and magazines across the nation. About 1937, he took a photograph of model Katherine Meier (Cameron) gazing at a Venus flytrap display on Moore’s desk. The picture was reprinted in the Christian Science Monitor.

Celebrated landscape architect Charles Freeman Gillette included Venus flytraps in the improvements he made to Greenfield Lake. Wrightsville Beach resident Mrs. Cecil Appleberry, an inspiring naturalist, led a campaign in 1951 to create state laws limiting the commercial shipment of the plants. Artist Emma Lossen, historian and fly trap aficionado Elizabeth F. McKoy, and florist and botanist Henry Rehder, featured the traps in the 1963 garden he created for St. John’s Art Gallery. Henry’s brother Stanley explained the wonders of the little plant to Barbara Walters and 90 million viewers on the “Today Show” in 1976.

Unlike the old days, when nurturing a Venus flytrap was a trial-and-error process, the Internet gives easy access to helpful instructions. They are picky about a lot of things, not just latitude and longitude. When people spring the trap for fun, it stresses them. They only like certain kinds of water. And the sort of food humans eat can kill them. If I ever get another flytrap, I’ll study first.

Reprinted from Susan’s Blogue

WILMINGTON — It was Aug. 28, 1998. On that night, the one following our latest hurricane, my then14-year-old daughter announced a sleepover at her best friend’s house. “It’s a tradition,” Catherine reminded me, simultaneously asking permission and packing her bag. “Remember,” she said, “I spent the night at Jill’s after Hurricane Bertha, and after Hurricane Fran, too.”

Jill, left and Catherine were so inseparable they were called “Foot-for-Foot.” Photo: Susan T. Block.

Being a native of Wilmington, I knew well that traditions are part of mammoth storms. Only on Christmas Eve is there such a feeling of family as there is when a hurricane nears the doorstep. On that uncertain Night of the Different, even Catherine and Jill knew not to mention spending it somewhere other than home – nor would they want to. But let the clouds clear the next day, and teenagers wanted to gather with their own friends.

Other traditions or simple chores included filling a bathtub with water, in case the usual supply was cut off or compromised; taping large windows, a chore that must be done early-on, lest person and plywood turn into a sail powered by early gusts; and, for me, picking up our large orange tabby cat, walking him over to the window, and whispering, “Kato, there’s gonna’ be storm.” I’m pretty sure Kato knew long before I told him.

Bonnie hit Wilmington, North Carolina on Aug. 27, 1998. My parents like most residents of nearby Wrightsville Beach, evacuated and came to stay with us in comparative safety, since we lived on the mainland. Their visit reminded me of Robert Frost’s poem, “The Death of the Hired Man.”  ”Home is the place where, when you have to go here, and they have to take you in.” Though a fiercely private and independent couple, they seemed truly happy and relaxed there on that dangerous night and we were pleased to give them safe harbor.

The wonder of the wind kept everyone spellbound until it reached a speed that frightened us away from the sliding glass doors. Still, we watched the shadows from across the room as an invisible and mighty power battered large oaks in our backyard like mastiffs shaking kittens. Smaller fruit trees and gardenia bushes looked like mixed greens in a Cuisinart.

The noise of it went from howl to roar and back to howl, over and over again. During Bonnie, we only lost branches and limbs, but often, as we discovered after Hurricane Fran departed in 1996, the wrenching sound of grand old trees splitting and falling on a thick bed of wet leaves is lost in the deafening din of a hurricane.

The electricity went out early. Justified by a cold stove, we ate sandwiches, snack food and a large loaf of homemade bread Mother had baked that morning. Long before dark, I lit scented candles all around the house, just as my grandmother lit a large old, and not so aromatic, kerosene lamp the night in 1960 when Hurricane Donna hit Wilmington. I feel sure Nana lit the same lamp Oct. 15, 1954 when Hurricane Hazel battered Wilmington. I don’t remember the storm, but I do remember my parents pointing to downed trees and talking about Hazel the next day, and I remember thinking that Hazel must be a very strong and mean woman.

A visit from Daddy and Mother on a sunnier day in 2004. Photo: Susan T. Block.

In 1998, the eye of Bonnie brought a lightened sky and a low steady moan. A couple jogged by our house wearing brightly colored clothing and sheepish grins. A relative who lives nearby sprung for a generator and dropped by to borrow some fresh videos. We all made furtive trips outside to check the damage and to feel daring. But the storm barely moved and the eye elongated, turning what usually is a brief respite into a long and boring wait.

We passed the time listening to television reports on a FM battery-powered radio. Though locally generated stories, delivered by Frances Weller and other members of the veteran hurricane team at WECT-TV, sounded accurate, a national newscast exaggerated a bit. Eventually, we all headed for bed as the tail end of Bonnie, or Pokey as we called her, brought more high wind.

After the storm moved away, weeks of debris removal work began. Bright blue tarps waved over many houses until roofing contractors could patch their way across town. Natives knew that patience pays, because we had seen prices go down by the week after other storms when both seasoned and instant tree workers arrived from neighboring states. Some slept in trucks and traveled in packs until the high-paying work was over. Whole trees, neatly chopped in six-foot lengths crowded the edges of our streets until debris removal trucks lumbered their way through New Hanover County.

Wild animal carnage and mold made pockets of unpleasantness that lasted for months. After hurricanes Bertha and Fran hit Wilmington in 1996, there were many places in town that called for new road signs: ones with a slash across a nose. Soap, bleach and gallons of water were used indoors to combat the combined effects of heat and the sort of humidity that swells doors shut.

Hurricane Bertha in 1996 beat up the boardwalk at the author’s Turtle Hall Harbor neighborhood and, after years of no hurricanes, pruned the whole neighborhood. Photo: Susan T. Block.

A sampling of what Hazel wrought at Wrightsville Beach. Photo: William J. Boney, courtesy of William J. Boney, Jr.

Hurricanes follow their own schedules and paths. Sometimes they avoid a locale for years, then Bam-Bam-Bam, you get hit multiple times within a decade. Sometimes a predicted hit turns into a brush-by and a field of beautiful whole conchs shows up on shore. And sometimes, even inland, wind takes a back seat to flooding.

Hurricane flooding takes many forms, the most famous being ocean storm surge, but rainwater holds many surprises. Some of my friends went to Raleigh to escape the effects of Hurricane Fran in 1996, only to be stranded there by floods after the storm blew inland. With power gone, they lived off vending machine food until they finally made it to a grocery store to buy enough food and wine to get them through.

Hurricane Fran played a water trick on our Turtle Hall neighborhood. Two days after she hit, pipe damage and clogged drains pooled three feet of water into the main street. Catherine, Jill, Freddy and I returned from a one-night trip to Charlotte to find that we had to abandon our car three blocks from the house and wade through murky water. Thoughts of snakes, eels, snapping turtles and errant electrical power dogged me all the way home.

Hurricane Floyd in 1999 was a good example of unpredicted storm flooding. Such rain I have never heard. It sounded like water from a hundred fire hoses aimed down at our roof. After our yard flooded, it just kept raining, but finally stopped before damaging our house. Most Wilmingtonians were fortunate that way, but an hour’s drive inland, folks weren’t so lucky. Lives and homes were lost.

Closing in on the active hurricane season, we always double-check our homeowners’ policies, think about stocking up on batteries and hope to heck Jim Cantore will visit us this year for sentimental reasons only.

So, why do we live in a city perched between the Atlantic Ocean and a river called Cape Fear? We live here because we are perched between the Atlantic Ocean and a river called Cape Fear.

It is the compass point of breathtaking arcs. The beauty and opportunities afforded by Wilmington’s location made it a seductive city 272 years ago, and make it so today.

The danger of Hurricanes Past, whose names become bold marks on our personal timelines, is tinged with curious excitement because we have weathered them. That a new one could hit us at high tide as a Category 5, or some new global-warmed number, is a thought devoid of excitement and something most of us choose not to consider. We just enjoy seeing sunlight’s diamonds dancing on the waters.

Reprinted from Susan’s Blogue

WILMINGTON — Most days, there’s barely a ripple in the placid ponds that dot southeastern North Carolina. Many of them sit in relative isolation from Wilmington’s busy-ness.  Visiting the beauty and quiet serves as balm. I’ve watched pond fishing from afar, and used to think it was a random sort of exercise reserved for the most complacent and passive among us, but over the past year, I’ve learned I was wrong. It was interviews, an excursion and fishing journals that changed my mind.

I found that serious pond fishermen are as focused on their avocation as hounds are to a hunt. What’s more, there’s a sort of cunning going on there that amazes. The language of fishing should have been a clue: bait, lure, angle, hook – but it really was a surprise to learn that many intelligent human fishermen spend lots of time trying to out-think their prehistoric  prey. The good news, it seems to me,  is that pond fishing is an elemental battle of nature in a world that becomes increasingly artificial; it can provide delectable entrees; and it keeps a lot of people happy, busy and out of worse trouble.

Greenfield Lake in Wilmington was a favorite destination for local pond fishermen. This postcard is circa 1910.

The written records I studied spanned 110 years, beginning in 1901, when Luola Sprunt reported on an outing with her father, Col. Kenneth M. Murchison, and son, James Laurence Sprunt. “Went fishing at 2:30 p.m.,” she wrote, “and caught ten whopping rock fish – one about 15 inches or more by JLS, and another nearly as large by Col. KMM. Tried moonlight fishing but it was a fluke.”

Luola, a genuine Southern Belle, continued to fish from time to time, and so did her daughter-in-law – Annie Gray Sprunt, another Belle who didn’t shrink from the unattractive aspects of snaring creatures ichthys.

In 1907, Wilmingtonian Theodore Gwathmey Empie, grandson of Dr. Adam Empie  began writing a journal that included hunting and fishing trips. Empie was a legendary fisherman who won many tournaments and trophies through the years. He was president of Carolina Metals Products and lived at 209 South Fifth St. in Wilmington.

Though much of Empie’s fishing took places in the ocean or rivers in North Carolina and Canada, his favorite ponds and lakes also are featured in the journal. The waters covered a lot of ground: Greenfield Lake, McIlhenny’s Farm, Smoky Lake, White Lake, Alligator Creek, Moore Lake, Island Lake, McKoy’s Pond, Rat Island, Mill Pond, Ness Creek (Wrightsboro), Kidd’s Landing at Squaw Lake and Lake Waccamaw.

Empie’s fishing buddies included George T. Clark, Martin Williard, Sr., Eugene Berry, Robert R. Bridgers, J. L. Campbell, B. H. Bridgers, Rob Calder, Milton Calder, Dr. R. W. Hogue, George Kidder, Theodore Lovering, Sid Williams, and Theodore’s  brother, Brooke Gwathmey Empie. The bait they used ranged from that that was too usual to mention, to drum throat, liver, “formaldehyded shrimp”, and blue fish.

Merely traveling to a fishing venue in those days was seldom without frustrations. “Horseless carriages” still had plenty of kinks, and roads throughout southeastern North Carolina were famous statewide for being rough ones. The following account, presented unedited, describes a single fishing trip to Rich’s Inlet, but serves as a good example of automotive frustration during that era.

Theodore Empie writes:

The Theodore Empie home in Wilmington. Photo: Susan T. Block

“October 9, 1910.  Junction Restaurant at 4 am. Bridgers and Calder came in at 5 am looking like a comedy team stating they were late because they wanted to be late and had trouble with the auto. After breakfast got as far as Front and Market and found machine out of gear. Fixed machine after one hour of work and hunted down the sewer for bolt that Bridgers let fall.

“Went (within) a mile of the Nixon House, found the gasoline escaping because of bushes opening the exhaust pipe and saw that one tire had gone off the rear wheel. Drove down to sound, sand flies biting lively. Decided to fix wheel when we got back.

“Went to fish and fished under ideal conditions and caught nothing but one drum weighing about 1 1/2 lbs, which Bob Calder secured, and also one Blue Fish. Saw fish striking in channel and B. Calder and myself went after them. He caught two blue fish and threw away a squid. I caught four blue fish and a trout, and both of us were nearly eaten alive with sand flies. Coming on back they nearly devoured us, and when we arrived at the auto they were biting furiously. Bridgers at this point (late afternoon) threw away the lunch saying we would be in town for supper.

“We decided to run to the main road and fix the tire. After we had gone about a mile, examination showed one of the steel rims which held the rubber tire had been lost in this mile. We looked for it in the dark, and not finding it enlisted a negro who did find it.  It had been sprung , so it required 1 1/2 hours to put it on the tire.

“We then came home uneventfully; stopped at my house for a drink of whiskey as Milton Calder had the key to all the Calder whiskey, and Mr. Bridgers left me saying, ‘Theo, you must admit there is no place like Rich Inlet to fish for Drum.’ ”

Empie supplemented his fishing and hunting experiences with ornithological observations, and became Wilmington’s leading expert. He learned to mimic the various birdcalls too, and gave bird speeches and demonstrations to clubs and school groups for many years.

In 1942, fearing much that he had learned would be lost at his death, he named Mrs. Cecil (Edna) Appleberry to succeed him as local bird expert. She continued and grew the Empie bird tradition, founding the Wilmington Bird Club, and becoming a nationally recognized champion for the appreciation of birds, and conservation of their optimum environments.

Today, Theodore Empie (1872-1947) is known best as the donor, with wife, Evelyn, of the land that became Empie Park.

Reprinted with permission from Susan’s Blogue

Louis T. Moore and Lorna Doone. Photo courtesy of Peggy Moore Perdew.

“Trees are a God-given asset which require a century to mature, and which can be destroyed within a half hour when there is a plan to do so.” — Louis T. Moore

WILMINGTON — Louis T. Moore (1885-1961) had a lifelong fascination with trees and was a pioneer in their conservation. His interest sprang from his sensitivity towards natural beauty that colored his career green long before the word took on its present meaning.

The Wilmington native’s love of trees was encouraged during his college years at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill when William Chambers Coker, the legendary tree enthusiast, was teaching botany and creating the University of North Carolina’s Coker Arboretum.

Moore returned to his hometown in 1906 and became city editor of the Wilmington Dispatch. Due to an earlier bout with polio that had left him with a paralyzed foot, he remained in Wilmington during World War I.

Named as secretary of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce in 1921, Moore worked tirelessly for the material good of the sleepy North Carolina port by waging campaigns to further the regional economy.

He lobbied to deepen the Cape Fear River channel, dredge an Intracoastal Waterway link, improve connecting corridors and build the city’s first river bridge. Through his speeches, voluminous correspondences and national magazine articles he recruited businesses to the area. His efforts helped existing institutions, too, like maritime shipping companies and the mighty Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, headquartered in Wilmington throughout his career.

While the business side of Moore entailed preserving the area’s legacy of commercial strength, the poet within studied and celebrated its various natural wonders like few people had before him. Many of the thousand panoramic photographs he took from 1921 to 1939 capture southeastern North Carolina’s lush environment. Though trees would become his focus, other living treasures caught his eye, too. The most unusual specimen was the carnivorous Venus flytrap, which he photographed and championed long before measures were taken for its protection. His steady efforts helped fuel a Cape Fear Garden Club drive during the 1950s to outlaw commercial sales of the plant.

The grand old trees of Hilton where Cornelius Harnett’s home “Maynard” once stood. Photo: N.C. Dept. of Conservation and Development.

The trees of Market Street, circa 1920. Photo: Fales Collection, New Hanover County Library.

Moore also wrote about the beauty of daffodils, camellias and azaleas, but it was the subject of trees that caused him to become enflamed. If anything other than an act of nature felled one of them, Moore had a tendency to spew words like a sawmill discharging wood chips. Trees were far more than regal beauty and grace to him. They marked time for us as humans and were community treasures. The oldest trees are silent witnesses to centuries of change, drama and, sometimes, mindless development. A precious few seem to become characters in the tale of the lower Cape Fear.

Moore’s loudest, longest tree campaign came about in an attempt to save hundreds of live oaks that once graced Wilmington’s downtown avenues. By the late 1940s, Third Street, a leg of U.S. 421, still boasted some grand oaks, but heavy oil truck traffic and a grid of utility poles had further compromised their aesthetic contributions. Moore and his allies called the byway “Gasoline Alley” and “South Pole Street.” Market Street, an intersecting east-west corridor, was another proverbial tree-lined boulevard until city fathers voted to widen it, and this raised Moore’s ire as well.

Moore and a handful of fellow progressive thinkers went on the warpath. “I remember how upset Daddy was when they cut down the pretty trees in the plaza on South Third Street and Market Street,” said Moore’s daughter, Peggy M. Perdew, in 2008. “I thought he was going to have a stroke. One of Mother’s friends watched him talking about this occasion and said it was ‘just like witnessing the eruption of Mt. Etna.’”

Operating as chairman of the New Hanover County Historical Society, Moore went before a joint meeting of the N. C. Highway Commission and Wilmington City Council to protest. He called the officials “dictators,” as a large crowd cheered him on and as he accused the antagonists of having “no interest in the community.” Moore said their disregard for trees was turning South Third Street into a utility pole graveyard.

Moore, who wasn’t nicknamed “Bully” for nothing, continued to chide the councilmen by distributing the following “anonymous” poem. (With apologies to Joyce Kilmer).

“I think that I shall never see,

A councilman who loves a tree.

Trees whose beauty add renown

To the fair name of our town.

For years they’ve stood through sun and rain

Yet for their life we plead in vain.

Well, only God can make a tree,

But councilmen are picked by fools like me.”

Resolute in posture and spirit, Louis T. Moore stands at Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington, one of his favorite tree-laden spots. Photo: Fales Collection, New Hanover County Public Library.

Louis T. Moore turned 64 in 1949, a year in which he spent volunteer civic service hours learning what other cities were doing to address the problem of unnecessary tree removal. As a veteran researcher and freelance journalist, he had a wide network of contacts and soon discovered that Charleston had paid $3,300 to save the “Ashley Avenue Oak,” a 300-year old tree that would die of old age in about 1973. He also publicized the fact that New York City was going on the tree offense by encouraging tree plantings. Eight trees had recently been planted at Rockefeller Center and the idea captured Moore’s imagination. He later suggested that the Wilmington City Council begin celebrating an annual “Tree Planting Week,” and form a tree commission to “protect existing trees and to establish a program of ‘a tree planted for every one removed.’”

Moore continued his fight against what he called “horticultural murder” throughout his golden years, and his most dramatic battle occurred in 1950. Accompanied by friends who shared his love for the look of old Wilmington, Wallace Murchison, Burke H. Bridgers, and U. B. Ellis, Moore engaged in a two-hour battle with city council that became “hot and personal.” A large audience applauded loudly and long every time Moore scored a point for trees and they clapped like thunder when he accused the officials of “out-Stalining Stalin!”

Despite everyone’s efforts, 500 to 1,000 live oaks that ranged from mature to stately were ruthlessly felled from 1945 through 1950 along Third and Market streets in order to widen the roadbeds for increased traffic. Moore’s requests for the development of alternate routes were barely acknowledged. Rerouting commercial traffic alone could have saved the trees for another 30 years. “One is forced to speculate what other places in the U.S. would have permitted such wholesale demolition of trees,” wrote Moore to a local newspaper editor.

Then, in 1958, city government systematically destroyed an additional 600 trees following Hurricane Helene’s near miss on Sept. 26. Wind gusts up to 160 miles per hour and eight inches of rain had toppled many long-standing stalwarts, but the city manager subsequently ordered the demolition simply because he did not want to deal with downed utility lines in the event of another hurricane. “Many homes were without power of communication. It caused a tremendous inconvenience,” was virtually all the city manager could say in defense of his actions.

Louis Moore took this photo of the trees at Greenfield Lake in Wilmington. Photo: New Hanover County Library.

Louis T. Moore’s last epic battle as a tree saver occurred in 1959. Grand live oaks that sat along Market Street north of downtown where the handsome Kenan Houses mark the entrance to Carolina Heights were in danger. The gracious two-lane street would eventually be compressed into the present four-lane road, but thanks to Moore and many others after him, at least some of the live oaks survived. Moore decried the plan and called for a city-ordained conservation program to protect existing trees and to establish a replanting program to make up for those already destroyed.

“The simple fact that New York City is now planting 1,800 trees along its principal avenues, costing approximately $100 each, furnishes a splendid example which Wilmington well could follow with a program of replacement,” he told the mayor and city council members. “This is in rather marked and decided contrast with the oft-repeated information seen in our local press: ‘Trees Will Be Removed.’ Trees are a God-given asset which require a century to mature, and which can be destroyed within a half hour when there is a plan to do so.”

Moore undoubtedly made a difference. The trees that remain on Third Street and along Market Street, stand in part because of his efforts. He raised awareness and caused a change in attitude toward preserving trees. By influencing the actions of those in power and of social prominence, Moore prevented further loss of these arboreal resources and secured their place of importance in the coastal city.

In addition to the actual trees, he saved images of them in many photographs. Some, like the World’s Largest Living Christmas Tree have survived, but look much different today. The Dram Tree, the trees of Greenfield, the Washington Oak, the Airlie Oak, the dogwoods at Oakdale Cemetery and many live oaks at Orton Plantation are just a few of the grand old trees he celebrated through photography. Moore also invited accomplished photographers like John Hemmer to visit Wilmington and take photos of our area to distribute in other parts of the state and to include in national magazine articles. Either way, Louis T. Moore was a preservationist before the word came into common use.

This article first appeared in the March 2009 issue of Wrightsville Beach Magazine.