KENT ISLAND - In the end, they decided the once-mighty Wye Oak should be returned to the spot where it witnessed history for more than four centuries.
Meeting in a cold, cavernous Kent Island warehouse holding the largest remaining piece of the venerable tree, the committee charged with deciding the fate of its 65-foot-tall trunk opted yesterday to preserve it largely intact and return it to the quiet crossroads at Wye Mills, where it had stood for an estimated 460 years until a storm felled it during the summer.
People from across Maryland had offered suggestions for what to do with the 30-ton "bole," as it is called, from the serious to the wacky, from turning it into a podium for the governor to turning it into toilet seats for state legislators. Some wanted to distribute chunks of the tree around the state for educational purposes.
But a tribute to the champion tree's hometown won out.
"When that tree died, I got two sympathy letters, just like someone in my family had died," said committee member and retired postmaster Mary Ann Roe Massey, who has lived in Wye Mills for all of her 72 years and wore a necklace she made 60 years ago from the oak's acorns. "We want the tree."
The committee will make its recommendation to the governor's office, which will have the final say on what will happen to what the members call the "signature piece" of the Wye Oak.
Committee members hope to build a museum at the small Wye Oak State Park, where the tree stood for centuries. A stump surrounded by a fence is all that remains there. It will be up to the community, however, to come up with the funding and logistics before the tree is returned to them - a task that might not be easy.
"If we can get this back to Wye Mills," said committee member Mike Grant of the Department of Natural Resources, "that's what we want to do."
H.M. Dick Orrell, another 72-year Wye Oak resident and chief executive officer Orrell's Maryland Beaten Biscuit Inc., said he is sure he can find companies willing to come up with the $500,000 or so to build a permanent home for his beloved tree. The future of his tiny village might depend on it, Orrell says.
"We've got nothing else that will keep Wye Mills preserved," he said. People still stop by daily, looking for the famous oak. "They don't know it's gone, or they know it's gone and they still stop" to see what nature has wrought.
"Without the tree, we would lose a major tourist attraction. There's not one person in the town that I know of agrees with sawing the bole up."
The tree wasn't in the best of health in its old age, being held up with guy wires. A strong thunderstorm in June snapped the trunk, sending leaves and branches and limbs crashing to the ground. A crowd quickly gathered to mourn a tree that had become the symbol of the town, a tree among the most famous in the nation.
"We salvaged everything from the tree," said Carolyn V. Watson, assistant secretary for the Department of Natural Resources. "No parts of this tree were considered trash."
The entire bole will not remain intact, however, in deference to science and education, committee members agreed yesterday. A tree-dating expert from Columbia University in New York will be asked to slice off a section to determine whether the tree really is 460 years old, as many believe. Another slice - called a "cookie" - will be taken, if possible, in order to have something to put on display in a museum and to use when traveling to schools to teach children about the tree.
"It was here before Maryland was a state, before this was a nation," Watson said. "It blows people's minds to put it in perspective."
Just because the big-ticket proposals are off the table doesn't mean there won't be souvenirs made from the Wye Oak. Eight dump trucks filled with the tree's remains, as well as 13,000 leaves and enough wood already milled to make a desk, are in storage.
The state is looking for someone to coordinate an effort to turn the best of hundreds of submissions from the public into reality. Five hundred pins made from Wye Oak leaves recently sold out in a few days. And there is enough material left to make pens and pencils, crab mallets, pieces of commemorative art - any number of Wye Oak memorabilia. The money raised will help cover the costs associated with caring for the tree's remains. Moving the tree again is expected to cost $15,000.
But there was little interest among committee members in cutting the biggest piece left into pieces.
"I think we've come up with something Maryland can be proud of," Watson told the committee. "We've done the right thing."