MORGANTOWN — Following the loss of his wife, Milan Roh took solace in two of his favorite things – cycling and Morgantown’s riverside rail-trail.
Over the course of three years the 75-year old Roh logged 10,000 miles along the trail, peddling essentially with one leg due to the effects of childhood polio.
It was during one of these rides that he suddenly realized how he wanted to honor and remember his longtime companion, whom he met as a young man while both worked in a bank downtown.
His son, Michael Roh, remembers the decision.
“After my mom passed away that was kind of his go-to place to just deal with the pain, I think. One day as he was riding through there he said ‘I think I know what to do.’ He was thinking about the cherry trees in D.C. and he thought it would be so nice to have a tunnel, a canopy of trees, as you pass through the amphitheater section,” Michael Roh said. “That’s how he wanted to remember her.”
So that’s what he did.
In 2001, Milan Roh gifted some 45 Yoshino cherry trees to the city to be planted along the trail in honor of his late wife, Geraldine “Jerry” Murphy Roh.
The younger Roh said he’s wheeled his father, now 87, down to the trail the last few years to see the maturing trees filled out with their distinctive white blossoms.
“He just loves it. He sits there, I think, and just reflects,” he said. “So you can imagine what he’s going through with this.”
By “this” Roh means the recent announcement by City Manager Paul Brake that the trees will be removed and replaced one-for-one with much younger trees of the same variety as part of more than $4 million in renovations to the riverfront and amphitheater.
While Roh said it sounds as if the die is already cast, he’s not pleased with how the situation has been handled by the city.
He explained that his family knew nothing of any discussions regarding the trees until he and his wife happened to overhear a conversation in March while down on the trail.
“We heard this guy talking and he basically says, ‘This is so beautiful, but I hear they’re coming out,’ and he was talking about the trees. So I interrupted him and asked where he’d heard that,” Roh said. “To have to hear it like that was pretty tough to take. The next day I called the city.”
Roh said he was told that removal of the trees was just one of many options being explored. He said that when he didn’t hear back from Brake, he figured no news was good news. That changed earlier this month. Roh said he was contacted about a week before the Oct. 16 city council meeting, during which Brake announced that 35-40 of the trees would be removed and replaced during the upcoming riverfront renovations.
“I think he made it sound like it was a sensitive issue and that we were kept aware of it and so on,” Roh said. “But when I talked to him it wasn’t really like hey, we want to work with you. It was here’s what we’re doing and we want to make sure you’re aware of it, I just think that was really badly mishandled. And needless to say my father is just heartbroken.”
Roh said he believes the city administration’s claims that the trees are unhealthy or improperly situated along the trail were overstated. He said he believes the issue lies more in the potential cost of protecting the trees during construction.
While Roh said he appreciates the city’s offer to replace the trees, it does little to console his father, who knows he may never see the replacements blossom.
“He’ll never get to enjoy that. I just feel so bad for him. He’s an emotional guy and he let’s things build up inside sometimes. I just know it’s going to be really, really hard on him to see those trees go,” Roh said. “The whole thing is just frustrating and I don’t know really what to do. I’m not one who likes to cause a big stir. I don’t like getting into politics. But this has been handled poorly.”
Tweet @DominionPostWV. Email bconley@dominionpost.com
