Arbor Day honors historian

If you have a passion for trees and local history, you won’t want to miss this Saturday’s annual Arbor Day celebration, presented by the Crescenta Valley Town Council and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

Arbor Day has been an annual tree planting observance since 1872, when J. Sterling Morton first proposed the holiday in Nebraska. More than an estimated one million trees were planted on that first Arbor Day, April 10, 1872. Other states later took up the tradition and since 1882 it has been a national observance, on or around April 22, which was Morton’s birthday. The event is celebrated primarily in schools and honors historically significant people and events across the country.

Crescenta Valley’s Arbor Day ceremony begins at 9 a.m. tomorrow at Two Strike Park and will include music from St. James the Less Catholic School’s children’s choir and the 24-piece Crescenta Valley High School jazz band. There will also be information provided and free items offered, including small trees, from 20 vendor booths.

This year, the ceremony will honor Crescenta Valley pioneer and historian Charles Bausback, known for many years as the historian to TV personality Huell Howser.

“I’m a very civic-minded person and I’ve been to every Arbor Day celebration [in La Crescenta], but I never thought I’d be honored,” Bausback said.

There have been several Arbor Day celebrations in the 20 years the Crescenta Valley Town Council has been in existence; however, only in the last nine years has it been a regular annual event, said Town Council member Danette Erickson.

“It’s very important to have Arbor Day celebrations to bring the community together and stop and appreciate what we have in life — the trees and wonderful members of our community, our pioneers, such as Charles Bausback,” Erickson said.

Bausback — who is a survivor of the 1934 New Year’s Day Montrose Flood — was born in 1922 in Richfield Park, N.J., to Meta and Charles Bausback.

Because he suffered from childhood asthma, his family moved across the country to live in the Crescenta Valley in 1928, following a 1926 report released touting the country’s healthiest air.

It took the family three months to make the cross-country trip, Bausback recalled.

Bausback went through school in the Glendale school system, and graduated from Glendale High School in 1941.