Sculptor carves three angels out of dying trees at Kansas cemetery

Published: 2004-11-23

BASEHOR, Kan. (CNS) -- Usually when a tree dies, no matter how venerable, it becomes wood chips or is used for a bonfire. But three dying Norway pines more than a century old at Holy Angels Cemetery in Basehor were saved from that fate. "They were the oldest and prettiest trees in the cemetery, and we wanted to hold onto them somehow," Joyce Bolan told The Leaven, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Kansas City. Bolan is the secretary at Holy Angels Parish, which includes the cemetery. For a solution, the parish sought angelic intervention -- and they got it. Russell Ehart, a native of Springdale and sometime resident of Kansas and New York, was commissioned to carve the 10-foot trunks that remained of the trees into angel sculptures. Ehart has carved all sorts of things, from the Jayhawk mascot of the University of Kansas to St. Francis of Assisi.

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