Friends of Trees celebrates Cynthia Sulaski, neighborhood coordinator

by Chelsea Schuyler

After serving as Overlook’s neighborhood coordinator for 11 years, Cynthia Sulaski is passing the torch. Her volunteer hours tally in the thousands, and she’s responsible for about 800 trees in the Overlook neighborhood.

Cynthia agreed to let me interview her at her home so I could share with readers a little about her dedication and ingenuity, and what she’s given to her neighborhood and to all of Portland’s friends of trees.

As we talked, she gazed out her window at the beautiful Red Oak (oaks are her favorite species) that she planted in her planting strip with Chad Honl, former neighborhood trees manager at Friends of Trees. Its leaves were the colors of an autumn sunset, shades of red and orange.

Cynthia has planted all the trees on her property during the 12 years that she’s lived there. “I bought a house that had zero trees on it, your standard ugly/boring 1950s thing,” she said. The only plants in her yard were some dying lilacs. Then Cynthia and Friends of Trees came along, and you can imagine what it looks like now.

“Over the years I just love seeing my Japanese Persimmon and my crabapple and my oaks, and I think, well, 11 to 12 years ago there was nothing here.”

Just as she transformed her yard, Cynthia became a Friends of Trees volunteer and transformed her neighborhood.

“I really did not want money to interfere with a homeowner’s desire to get a tree,” she said. But that wasn’t easy. In those days, she said, Friends of Trees had fewer employees, and everyone was just trying to find their feet.

“In the old days it was all on the backs of the coordinators. The first year, after organizing the planting (laughs), I came home and slept, I think, for three hours. It was like I’d walked into a wall. … I was just overwhelmed at the beginning. It was so much work interfacing between the homeowner and the urban forester, and the pieces of paper would come to us, and I’d have to go to Friends of Trees and drop them off for each homeowner who was interested, and then contact the urban forester. I mean, it was an unbelievable process.”

Rumor has it that Cynthia was a trooper through it all. As Friends of Trees grew, incorporated more technology, and plantings started to go more smoothly, she was able to get creative. She cultivated a relationship with Kaiser Permanente with the help of Jim Gersbach, longtime Friends of Trees volunteer and Kaiser employee. Now Kaiser donates its space for the planting day’s morning meetings and lunch.

“I also wanted people to have a fun experience,” Cynthia said, “so I started going to businesses and asking them to donate a little something. It didn’t have to be a big deal. It could be a five dollar gift certificate.”

The generosity of Portland businesses was evident right away. “The first year we had 30 donations,” Cynthia said. The donations were raffled off to volunteers, crew leaders, and homeowners, and the raffle has since become tradition. Says Neighborhood Trees Manager Whitney Dorer, “It adds a fun twist to planting day: Win a prize!”

Moments that Cynthia especially appreciates include: hearing relatives speak of their passed loved one’s passion for trees; teaming up with like-minded organizations; and three young students from Saudi Arabia that a PSU professor brought to a planting.

“It was a cold day,” Cynthia said, “and they came (she laughs) in not-appropriate clothing. They didn’t have big bulky jackets on, and I worried and worried about them the whole day.” But the boys had fun. “They got to meet some girls at the planting because all ages of people come to plantings.”

Cynthia clearly loves the trees she’s helped her neighbors plant, and the trees that she planted at her home. “My favorite thing to do when I plant a tree on my property,” she said, her voice rising with excitement, “is to run inside the house, go to a window, and wait to see the first bird that alights on the tree.” It doesn’t take long, she said, for wildlife to figure out that they have a new place to hang out.

Thanks to Cynthia, the birds in Overlook have many trees to land on, Cynthia’s neighbors have many tree-lined streets to appreciate, and Friends of Trees has Cynthia and all her hard work to thank.

Cynthia will be at the annual Overlook and Arbor Lodge planting on the last Saturday in January. If you plant trees with us that day, please take a moment during the bustle and fun of the morning to say hello to this extraordinary volunteer who made so many plantings possible.

–Chelsea Schuyler is a contributing blogger for Friends of Trees